Myths and mythmakers : old tales and superstitions interpreted by comparative mythology

/OM.C/S

MYTHS AND MYTH
MAKERS

OLD TALES AND SUPERSTITIONS
INTERPRETED BY COMPAR-
ATIVE MYTHOLOGY

BY

JOHN FISKE

La mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait suivre les croy-
ances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde jusqu'aux superstitions de nos
campagnes. — EDMOND SCHERXK.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
prcj-tf Cambribge

COPYRIGHT 1872 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.

COPYRIGHT 1900 BY JOHN FISKE

COPYRIGHT 1902 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO MY DEAR FRIEND

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT AUTUMN

EVENINGS SPENT AMONG WEREWOLVES

AND TROLLS AND NIXIES

3: ttetiicate

THIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES

20074S7

PREFACE

IN publishing this somewhat rambling and
unsystematic series of papers, in which I
have endeavoured to touch briefly upon a
great many of the most important points in the
study of mythology, I think it right to observe
that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with
intricate discussions, I have sometimes cut the
matter short, expressing myself with dogmatic
definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might
perhaps have seemed more becoming. In treat-
ing of popular legends and superstitions, the
paths of inquiry are circuitous enough, and sel-
dom can we reach a satisfactory conclusion until
we have travelled all the way around Robin
Hood's barn and back again. I am sure that
the reader would not have thanked me for ob-
structing these crooked lanes with the thorns
and brambles of philological and antiquarian
discussion, to such an extent as perhaps to
make him despair of ever reaching the high
road. I have not attempted to review, other-
wise than incidentally, the works of Grimm,
Miiller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, and Tylor ; nor
vii

PREFACE

can I pretend to have added anything of con-
sequence, save now and then some bit of ex-
planatory comment, to the results obtained by
the labour of these scholars ; but it has rather
been my aim to present these results in such a
way as to awaken general interest in them. And
accordingly, in dealing with a subject which de-
pends upon philology almost as much as astro-
nomy depends upon mathematics, I have omitted
philological considerations wherever it has been
possible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe that
nothing has been advanced as established which
is not now generally admitted by scholars, and
that nothing has been advanced as probable for
which due evidence cannot be produced. Yet
among many points which are proved, and
many others which are probable, there must
always remain many other facts of which we
cannot feel sure that our own explanation is the
true one ; and the student who endeavours to
fathom the primitive thoughts of mankind, as
enshrined in mythology, will do well to bear in
mind ' the modest words of Jacob Grimm, —
himself the greatest scholar and thinker who
has ever dealt with this class of subjects, — "I
shall indeed interpret all that I can, but 1 can-
not interpret all that I should like."
PETERSHAM, September 6, 1872.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE ... I

II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE . 50

III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS . . 94

IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS ... 141
V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD . . 191

VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI .... 235

VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD . . .282

NOTE . 325

INDEX •»..... 327

The portrait of Dr. Fiske is from a photograph taken in 1883

MYTHS AND MYTH-
MAKERS

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known
as William Tell. His exploits have been
celebrated by one of the greatest poets
and one of the most popular musicians of mod-
ern times. They are doubtless familiar to many
who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkel-
ried, who are quite ignorant of the prowess of
Roland, and to whom Arthur and Lancelot,
nay, even Charlemagne, are but empty names.
Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation,
it is very likely that no such person as William
Tell ever existed, and it is certain that the story
of his shooting the apple from his son's head has
no historical value whatever. In spite of the
wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, especially
of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is
forced upon us as soon as we begin to study the
legend in accordance with the canons of modern
historical criticism. It is useless to point to
I

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Tell's lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of
the market-place at Altdorf, or to quote for our
confusion his crossbow preserved in the arsenal
at Zurich, as unimpeachable witnesses to the
truth of the story. It is in vain that we are told,
" The bricks are alive to this day to testify to
it ; therefore, deny it not." These proofs are
not more valid than the handkerchief of St.
Veronica, or the fragments of the true cross.
For if relics are to be received as evidence, we
must needs admit the truth of every miracle
narrated by the Bollandists.

The earliest work which makes any allusion
to the adventures of William Tell is the chroni-
cle of the younger Melchior Russ, written in
1482. As the shooting of the apple was sup-
posed to have taken place in 1296, this leaves
an interval of one hundred and eighty-six years,
during which neither a Tell, nor a William, nor
the apple, nor the cruelty of Gessler, received
any mention. It may also be observed, paren-
thetically, that the charters of Kussenach, when
examined, show that no man by the name of
Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the
fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who
minutely describe the tyrannical acts by which
the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to re-
bellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or
betray the slightest acquaintance with his exploits
or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

of 1479 he is not alluded to. But we have still
better negative evidence. John of Winterthiir,
one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages,
was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten
(1315), at which his father was present. He
tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful
day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his flight
from the fatal field, half dead with fear. He
describes, with the loving minuteness of a con-
temporary, all the incidents of the Swiss revo-
lution, but nowhere does he say a word about
William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive.
These mediaeval chroniclers, who never failed to
go out of their way after a bit of the epigram-
matic and marvellous, who thought far more
of a pointed story than of historical credibility,
would never have kept silent about the adven-
tures of Tell if they had known anything about
them.

After this, it is not surprising to find that no
two authors who describe the deeds of William
Tell agree in the details of topography and
chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to
confront us when we leave the solid ground of
history and begin to deal with floating legends.
Yet, if the story be not historical, what could
have been its origin ? To answer this question
we must considerably expand the discussion.

The first author of any celebrity who doubted
the story of William Tell was Guillimann, in
3

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

his work on Swiss Antiquities, published in
1598. He calls the story a pure fable, but,
nevertheless, eating his words, concludes by
proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is
so popular ! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part ;
for, in 1760, as we are told, Uriel Freuden-
berger was condemned by the canton of Uri to
be burnt alive, for publishing his opinion that
the legend of Tell had a Danish origin.1

The bold heretic was substantially right, how-
ever, like so many other heretics, earlier and
later. The Danish account of Tell is given as
follows, by Saxo Grammaticus : —

" A certain Palnatoki, for some .time among
King Harold's body-guard, had made his brav-
ery odious to very many of his fellow soldiers
by the zeal with which he surpassed them in the
discharge of his duty. This man once, when
talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that
he was so skilled an archer that he could hit the
smallest apple placed a long way off on a wand
at the first shot ; which talk, caught up at first
by the ears of backbiters, soon came to the
hearing of the king. Now, mark how the wick-
edness of the king turned the confidence of the
sire to the peril of the son, by commanding that
this dearest pledge of his life should be placed
instead of the wand, with the threat that, unless
the author of this promise could strike off the
1 See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.

4

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

apple at the first flight of the arrow, he should
pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the
loss of his head. The king's command forced
the soldier to perform more than he had pro-
mised, and what he had said, reported by the
tongues of slanderers, bound him to accomplish
what he had not said. Yet did not his sterling
courage, though caught in the snare of slander,
suffer him to lay aside his firmness of heart;
nay, he accepted the trial the more readily
because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the
boy urgently when he took his stand to await
the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm ears
and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his
body, he should defeat the practised skill of the
bowman ; and, taking further counsel to pre-
vent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he
should be scared at the sight of the weapon.
Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he
struck the mark given him with the first he
fitted to the string. . . . But Palnatoki, when
asked by the king why he had taken more
arrows from the quiver, when it had been settled
that he should only try the fortune of the bow
once, made answer, ' That I might avenge on
thee the swerving of the first by the points of
the rest, lest perchance my innocence might
have been punished, while your violence escaped
scot-free.' " l

1 Saxo Grammaticus, bk. x. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.

5

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

This ruthless king is none other than the
famous Harold Blue-tooth, and the occurrence
is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the
story appears not only in Denmark, but in
England, in Norway, in Finland and Russia,
and in Persia, and there is some reason for sup-
posing that it was known in India. In Norway
we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-
footed, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold
Hardrada, who invaded England in 1066. In
Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil,
brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan.
In England there is the ballad of William of
Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many
details of the archery scene in " Ivanhoe."
Here says the dauntless bowman, —

'• I have a sonne seven years old;

Hee is to me full deere;
I will tye him to a stake —

All shall see him that bee here —
And lay an apple upon his head,

And goe six paces him froe,
And I myself with a broad arrowe

Shall cleave the apple in to we."

In the " Malleus Maleficarum " a similar
story is told of Puncher, a famous magician on
the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Cas-
tren dug up the same legend in Finland. It is
common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the Turks
and Mongolians ; " and a legend of the wild
6

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a
book in their lives, relates it, chapter and verse,
of one of their marksmen." Finally, in the
Persian poem of Farid-Uddin Attar, born in
1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots an
apple from the head of a beloved page. In all
these stories, names and motives of course dif-
fer ; but all contain the same essential incidents.
It is always an unerring archer who, at the ca-
pricious command of a tyrant, shoots from the
head of some one dear to him a small object, be
it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer
always provides himself with a second arrow,
and, when questioned as to the use he intended
to make of his extra weapon, the invariable re-
ply is, " To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my
son." Now, when a marvellous occurrence is
said to have happened everywhere, we may feel
sure that it never happened anywhere. Popular
fancies propagate themselves indefinitely, but
historical events, especially the striking and dra-
matic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here
collected lead inevitably to the conclusion that
the Tell myth was known, in its general features,
to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left
their primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia.

It may, indeed, be urged that some one of
these wonderful marksmen may really have ex-
isted and have performed the feat recorded in
the legend ; and that his true story, carried
7

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

about by hearsay tradition from one country to
another and from age to age, may have formed
the theme for all the variations above men-
tioned, just as the fables of La Fontaine were
patterned after those of ./Esop and Phaedrus,
and just as many of Chaucer's tales were con-
sciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt
there has been a good deal of borrowing and
lending among the legends of different peoples,
as well as among the words of different lan-
guages ; and possibly even some picturesque
fragment of early history may have now and
then been carried about the world in this man-
ner. But as the philologist can with almost un-
erring certainty distinguish between the native
and the imported words in any Aryan language,
by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so the
student of popular traditions, though working
with far less perfect instruments, can safely as-
sert, with reference to a vast number of legends,
that they cannot have been obtained by any
process of conscious borrowing. The difficul-
ties inseparable from any such hypothesis will
become more and more apparent as we proceed
to examine a few other stories current in differ-
ent portions of the Aryan domain.

As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must
the Welshman be deprived of his brave dog
Gellert, over whose cruel fate I confess to hav-
ing shed more tears than I should regard as
8

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

well bestowed upon the misfortunes of many a
human hero of romance. Every one knows how
the dear old brute killed the wolf which had
come to devour Llewellyn's child, and how the
prince, returning home and finding the cradle
upset and the dog's mouth dripping blood,
hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry of the
child from behind the cradle and the sight of
the wolf's body had rectified his error. To this
day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching
story, and shown the place called Beth-Gellert,1
where the dog's grave is still to be seen. Never-
theless, the story occurs in the fireside lore of
nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-
form it started in the Panchatantra, a collec-
tion of Sanskrit fables ; and it has even been
discovered in a Chinese work which dates from
A. D. 668. Usually the hero is a dog, but
sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, an insect, or
even a man. In Egypt it takes the following
comical shape : " A Wali once smashed a pot
full of herbs which a cook had prepared. The
exasperated cook thrashed the well-intentioned
but unfortunate Wali within an inch of his life,
and when he returned, exhausted with his ef-
forts at belabouring the man, to examine the

1 According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really de-
rived from " St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to
whom the church of Llangeller is consecrated. ' ' ( Words and
Places, p. 3390

9

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

broken pot, he discovered amongst the herbs a
poisonous snake." l Now this story of the Wall
is as manifestly identical with the legend of
Gellert as the English word father is with the
Latin pater ; but as no one would maintain that
the word father is in any sense derived from
pater, so it would be impossible to represent
either the Welsh or the Egyptian legend as a
copy of the other. Obviously the conclusion is
forced upon us that the stories, like the words,
are related collaterally, having descended from
a common ancestral legend, or having been sug-
gested by one and the same primeval idea.

Closely connected with the Gellert myth are
the stories of Faithful John and of Rama and
Luxman. In the German story, Faithful John
accompanies the prince, his master, on a journey
in quest of a beautiful maiden, whom he wishes
to make his bride. As they are carrying her
home across the seas, Faithful John hears some
crows, whose language he understands, fore-
telling three dangers impending over the prince,
from which his friend can save him only by
sacrificing his own life. As soon as they land,

1 Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd,
in Mr. Ralston' s excellent version, Krilof and his Fables,
p. 170. Many parallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-
Gould, Curious Myths, vol. i. pp. 126-136. See, also, the
story of Folliculus, — Swan, Gesfa Romanorum, ed. Wright,
vol. i. p. Ixxxii.

10

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

a horse will spring toward the king, which, if
he mounts it, will bear him away from his bride
forever ; but whoever shoots the horse, and
tells the king the reason, will be turned into
stone from toe to knee. Then, before the wed-
ding a bridal garment will lie before the king,
which, if he puts it on, will burn him like the
Nessos shirt of Herakles ; but whoever throws
the shirt into the fire and tells the king the reason
will be turned into stone from knee to heart.
Finally, during the wedding festivities, the
queen will suddenly fall in a swoon, and " un-
less some one takes three drops of blood from
her right breast she will die ; " but whoever
does so, and tells the king the reason, will be
turned into stone from head to foot. Thus fore-
warned, Faithful John saves his master from all
these dangers ; but the king misinterprets his
motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to
be hanged. On the scaffold he tells his story,
and while the king humbles himself in an agony
of remorse, his noble friend is turned into stone.
In the South Indian tale Luxman accom-
panies Rama, who is carrying home his bride.
Luxman overhears two owls talking about
the perils that await his master and mistress.
First he saves them from being crushed by the
falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags
them away from an arch which immediately
after gives way. By and by, as they rest under
ii

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps
up to the queen, and Luxman kills it with his
sword ; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop
of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's fore-
head. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king
starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing
his wife, upbraids him with his ingratitude,
whereupon Luxman, through grief at this un-
kind interpretation of his conduct, is turned
into stone.1

For further illustration we may refer to the
Norse tale of the " Giant who had no Heart in
his Body," as related by Dr. Dasent. This
burly magician having turned six brothers with
their wives into stone, the seventh brother —
the crafty Boots or many-witted Odysseus of
European folk-lore — sets out to obtain ven-
geance if not reparation for the evil done to his
kith and kin. On the way he shows the kind-
ness of his nature by rescuing from destruction
a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The grateful
wolf carries him on his back to the giant's
castle, where the lovely princess whom the
monster keeps in irksome bondage promises to
act, in behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and
to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps
his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero,
finally succumbs to feminine blandishments.

1 See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. i. pp.
145-149.

12

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

" Far, far away in a lake lies an island ; on that
island stands a church ; in that church is a well ;
in that well swims a duck ; in that duck there
is an egg ; and in that egg there lies my heart,
you darling." Boots, thus instructed, rides on
the wolf's back to the island ; the raven flies to
the top of the steeple and gets the church keys ;
the salmon dives to the bottom of the well, and
brings up the egg from the place where the
duck had dropped it ; and so Boots becomes
master of the situation. As he squeezes the
egg, the giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays
for his life, which Boots promises to spare on
condition that his brothers and their brides
should be released from their enchantment.
But when all has been duly effected, the treach-
erous youth squeezes the egg in two, and the
giant instantly bursts.

The same story has lately been found in
Southern India, and is published in Miss Frere's
remarkable collection of tales entitled " Old
Deccan Days." In the Hindu version the seven
daughters of a rajah, with their husbands, are
transformed into stone by the great magician
Punchkin, — all save the youngest daughter,
whom Punchkin keeps shut up in a tower until
by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her
to marry him. But the captive princess leaves
a son at home in the cradle, who grows up to
manhood unmolested, and finally undertakes
13

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the rescue of his family. After long and weary
wanderings he finds his mother shut up in
Punchkin's tower, and persuades her to play
the part of the princess in the Norse legend.
The trick is equally successful. " Hundreds of
thousands of miles away there lies a desolate
country covered with thick jungle. In the
midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees,
and in the centre of the circle stand six jars full
of water, piled one above another ; below the
sixth jar is a small cage which contains a little
green parrot ; on the life of the parrot depends
my life, and if the parrot is killed I must die." *
The young prince finds the place guarded by a
host of dragons, but some eaglets whom he has
saved from a devouring serpent in the course
of his journey take him on their crossed wings
and carry him to the place where the jars are
standing. He instantly overturns the jars, and

1 The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of Seyf-
el-Mulook and Bedeea-el-Jemal, where the Jinni's soul is in-
closed in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned
in a small box, and this inclosed in another small box, and
this again in seven other boxes, which are put into seven
chests, contained in a coffer of marble, which is sunk in the
ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook raises the
coffer by the aid ot Suleyman's seal-ring, and having extri-
cated the sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body
is converted into a heap of black ashes, and Seyf-el-Mulook
escapes with the maiden Dolet-Khatoon. See Lane's
Arabian Nights, vol. iii. p. 316.

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

seizing the parrot, obtains from the terrified
magician full reparation. As soon as his own
friends and a stately procession of other royal
or noble victims have been set at liberty, he
proceeds to pull the parrot to pieces. As the
wings and legs come away, so tumble ofF the
arms and legs of the magician ; and finally as
the prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin
twists his own head round and dies.

The story is also told in the highlands of
Scotland, and some portions of it will be recog-
nized by the reader as incidents in the Arabian
tale of the Princess Parizade. The union of
close correspondence in conception with mani-
fest independence in the management of the
details of these stories is striking enough, but
it is a phenomenon with which we become
quite familiar as we proceed in the study of
Aryan popular literature. The legend of the
Master Thief is no less remarkable than that
of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the
Thief, wishing to get possession of a farmer's
ox, carefully hangs himself to a tree by the
roadside. The farmer, passing by with his ox,
is indeed struck by the sight of the dangling
body, but thinks it none of his business, and
does not stop to interfere. No sooner has he
passed than the Thief lets himself down, and
running swiftly along a by-path, hangs himself
with equal precaution to a second tree. This
15

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

time the farmer is astonished and puzzled ; but
when for the third time he meets the same
unwonted spectacle, thinking that three suicides
in one morning are too much for easy credence,
he leaves his ox and runs back to see whether
the other two bodies are really where he thought
he saw them. While he is framing hypotheses
of witchcraft by which to explain the phenom-
enon, the Thief gets away with the ox. In the
Hitopadesa the story receives a finer point.
" A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went
to the market to buy a goat. Three thieves saw
him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. They
stationed themselves at intervals on the high-
road. When the Brahman, who carried the
goat on his back, approached the first thief, the
thief said, * Brahman, why do you carry a dog
on your back ? ' The Brahman replied, ' It is
not a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after he
was accosted by the second thief, who said,
' Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your
back ? ' The Brahman felt perplexed, put the
goat down, examined it, took it up again, and
walked on. Soon after he was stopped by the
third thief, who said, ' Brahman, why do you
carry a dog on your back ? ' Then the Brah-
man was frightened, threw down the goat, and
walked home to perform his ablutions for hav-
ing touched an unclean animal. The thieves
took the goat and ate it." The adroitness of
16

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

the Norse king in " The Three Princesses of
Whiteland " shows but poorly in comparison,
with the keen psychological insight and cynical
sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers. In the course
of his travels this prince met three brothers
fighting on a lonely moor. They had been
fighting for a hundred years about the posses-
sion of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots, which
would make the wearer invisible, and convey
him instantly whithersoever he might wish to
go. The king consents to act as umpire, pro-
vided he may once try the virtue of the magic
garments ; but once clothed in them, of course
he disappears, leaving the combatants to sit
down and suck their thumbs. Now in the " Sea
of Streams of Story," written in the twelfth
century by Somadeva of Cashmere, the In-
dian king Putraka, wandering in the Vindhya
Mountains, similarly discomfits two brothers
who are quarrelling over a pair of shoes, which
are like the sandals of Hermes, and a bowl
which has the same virtue as Aladdin's lamp.
" Why don't you run a race for them ? " sug-
gests Putraka ; and, as the two blockheads start
furiously off, he quietly picks up the bowl, ties
on the shoes, and flies away ! l

It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations.
The tales here quoted are fair samples of the

1 The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of
El-Basrah. See Lane's Arabian Nights, vol. iii. p. 452.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

remarkable correspondence which holds good
through all the various sections of Aryan folk-
lore. The hypothesis of lateral diffusion, as we
may call it, manifestly fails to explain coinci-
dences which are maintained on such an im-
mense scale. It is quite credible that one nation
may have borrowed from another a solitary
legend of an archer who performs the feats of
Tell and Palnatoki ; but it is utterly incredible
that ten thousand stories, constituting the en-
tire mass of household mythology throughout
a dozen separate nations, should have been
handed from one to another in this way. No
one would venture to suggest that the old gran-
nies of Iceland and Norway, to whom we owe
such stories as the Master Thief and the Prin-
cesses of Whiteland, had ever read Somadeva
or heard of the treasures of Rhampsinitos. A
large proportion of the tales with which we are
dealing were utterly unknown to literature until
they were taken down by Grimm and Frere and
Castren and Campbell, from the lips of ignorant
peasants, nurses, or house-servants, in Germany
and Hindustan, in Siberia and Scotland. Yet,
as Mr. Cox observes, these old men and women,
sitting by the chimney corner and somewhat
timidly recounting to the literary explorer the
stories which they had learned in childhood
from their own nurses and grandmas, " repro-
duce the most subtle turns of thought and
18

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

expression, and an endless series of complicated
narratives, in which the order of incidents and
the words of the speakers are preserved with a
fidelity nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition
of historical events. It may safely be said that
no series of stories introduced in the form of
translations from other languages could ever thus
have filtered down into the lowest strata of
society, and thence have sprung up again, like
Antaios, with greater energy and heightened
beauty." There is indeed no alternative for us
but to admit that these fireside tales have been
handed down from parent to child for more than
a hundred generations; that the primitive Aryan
cottager, as he took his evening meal of yava
and sipped his fermented mead, listened with
his children to the stories of Boots and Cinder-
ella and the Master Thief, in the days when the
squat Laplander was master of Europe and the
dark-skinned Sudra was as yet unmolested in
the Punjab. Only such community of origin
can explain the community in character between
the stories told by the Aryan's descendants,
from the jungles of Ceylon to the highlands of
Scotland.

This conclusion essentially modifies our view
of the origin and growth of a legend like that
of William Tell. The case of the Tell legend
is radically different from the case of the blind-
ness of Belisarius or the burning of the Alexan-
19

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

drian library by order of Omar. The latter are
isolated stories or beliefs ; the former is one of
a family of stories or beliefs. The latter are un-
trustworthy traditions of doubtful events ; but
in dealing with the former, we are face to face
with a myth.

What, then, is a myth ? The theory of Euhe-
meros, which was so fashionable a century ago,
in the days of the Abbe Banier, has long since
been so utterly abandoned that to refute it now
is but to slay the slain. The peculiarity of this
theory was that it cut away all the extraordi-
nary features of a given myth, wherein dwelt
its inmost significance, and to the dull and use-
less residuum accorded the dignity of primeval
history. In this way the myth was lost without
compensation, and the student, in seeking good
digestible bread, found but the hardest of peb-
bles. Considered merely as a pretty story, the
legend of the golden fruit watched by the dragon
in the garden of the Hesperides is not without
its value. But what merit can there be in the
gratuitous statement which, degrading the grand
Doric hero to a level with any vulgar fruit-
stealer, makes Herakles break a close with force
and arms, and carry off a crop of oranges which
had been guarded by mastiffs ? It is still worse
when we come to the more homely folk-lore
with which the student of mythology now has
to deal. The theories of Banier, which limped

20

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

and stumbled awkwardly enough when it was
only a question of Hermes and Minos and
Odin, have fallen never to rise again since the
problems of Punchkin and Cinderella and the
Blue Belt have begun to demand solution.
The conclusion has been gradually forced upon
the student that the marvellous portion of these
old stories is no illegitimate excrescence, but
was rather the pith and centre of the whole,1 in
days when there was no supernatural, because
it had not yet been discovered that there was
such a thing as nature. The religious myths of
antiquity and the fireside legends of ancient and
modern times have their common root in the
mental habits of primeval humanity. They are
the earliest recorded utterances of men concern-
ing the visible phenomena of the world into
which they were born.

That prosaic and coldly rational temper with
which modern men are wont to regard natural
phenomena was in early times unknown. We
have come to regard all events as taking place
regularly, in strict conformity to law : what-
ever our official theories may be, we instinctively
take this view of things. But our primitive
ancestors knew nothing about laws of nature,
nothing about physical forces, nothing about the
relations of cause and effect, nothing about the

1 •* Retrancher le merveilleux d'un my the, c'est le sup-
primer." Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.
21

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

necessary regularity of things. There was a time
in the history of mankind when these things
had never been inquired into, and when no gen-
eralizations about them had been framed, tested,
or established. There was no conception of an
order of nature, and therefore no distinct con-
ception of a supernatural order of things. There
was no belief in miracles as infractions of natural
laws, but there was a belief in the occurrence
of wonderful events too mighty to have been
brought about by ordinary means. There was an
unlimited capacity for believing and fancying,
because fancy and belief had not yet been checked
and headed off in various directions by estab-
lished rules of experience. Physical science is a
very late acquisition of the human mind, but
we are already sufficiently imbued with it to be
almost completely disabled from comprehending
the thoughts of our ancestors. " How Finn
cosmogonists could have believed the earth and
heaven to be made out of a severed egg, the
upper concave shell representing heaven, the
yolk being earth, and the crystal surrounding
fluid the circumambient ocean, is to us incom-
prehensible ; and yet it remains a fact that they
did so regard them. How the Scandinavians
could have supposed the mountains to be the
mouldering bones of a mighty Jotun, and the
earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot con-
ceive ; yet such a theory was solemnly taught

22

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

and accepted. How the ancient Indians could
regard the rain-clouds as cows with full udders
milked by the winds of heaven is beyond our
comprehension, and yet their Veda contains in-
disputable testimony to the fact that they were
so regarded." We have only to read Mr. Bar-
ing-Gould's book of " Curious Myths," from
which I have just quoted, or to dip into Mr.
Thorpe's treatise on " Northern Mythology,"
to realize how vast is the difference between our
standpoint and that from which, in the later
Middle Ages, our immediate forefathers re-
garded things. The frightful superstition of
werewolves is a good instance. In those days
it was firmly believed that men could be, and
were in the habit of being, transformed into
wolves. It was believed that women might
bring forth snakes or poodle-dogs. It was
believed that if a man had his side pierced in
battle, you could cure him by nursing the sword
which inflicted the wound. "As late as 1600
a German writer would illustrate a thunder-
storm destroying a crop of corn by a picture of
a dragon devouring the produce of the field with
his flaming tongue and iron teeth."

Now if such was the condition of the human
intellect only three or four centuries ago, what
must it have been in that dark antiquity when
not even the crudest generalizations of Greek
or of Oriental science had been reached ? The

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

same mighty power of imagination which now,
restrained and guided by scientific principles,
leads us to discoveries and inventions, must
then have wildly run riot in mythologic fictions
whereby to explain the phenomena of nature.
Knowing nothing whatever of physical forces,
of the blind steadiness with which a given effect
invariably follows its cause, the men of prime-
val antiquity could interpret the actions of na-
ture only after the analogy of their own actions.
The only force they knew was the force of
which they were directly conscious, — the force
of will. Accordingly, they imagined all the out-
ward world to be endowed with volition, and to
be directed by it. They personified everything,
— sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean,
earthquake, whirlwind.1 The comparatively en-
lightened Athenians of the age of Perikles
addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to
it to rain upon their gardens.2 And for calling

1 " No distinction between the animate and inanimate is
made in the languages of the Esquimaux, the Choctaws,
the Muskoghee, and the Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Chero-
kee, and the Algonquin-Lenape have it, so far as is known,
and with them it is partial." According to the Fijians,
" vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots
and canoes, have souls that are immortal, and that, like the
souls of men, pass on at last to Mbulu, the abode of departed
spirits." M'Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and
Plants," Fortnightly Review, vol. xii. p. 416.

a Marcus Aurelius, v. 7.

24

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

the moon a mass of dead matter, Anaxagoras
came near losing his life. To the ancients the
moon was not a lifeless ball of stones and clods :
it was the horned huntress, Artemis, coursing
through the upper ether, or bathing herself in
the clear lake ; or it was Aphrodite, protectress
of lovers, born of the sea-foam in the East near
Cyprus. The clouds were no bodies of vapor-
ized water : they were cows with swelling udders,
driven to the milking by Hermes, the summer
wind ; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain
by the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun ;
or swan-maidens, flitting across the firmament,
Valkyries hovering over the battlefield to re-
ceive the souls of falling heroes ; or, again, they
were mighty mountains piled one above another,
in whose cavernous recesses the divining wand
of the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures.
The yellow-haired sun, Phoibos, drove westerly
all day in his flaming chariot ; or perhaps, as
Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from
the sight of men ; wedded at eventide the violet
light (Oinone, lole), which he had forsaken in
the morning ; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazing
funeral-pyre; or, like Agamemnon, perished in
a blood-stained bath ; or, as the fish-god, Dagon,
swam nightly through the subterranean waters,
to appear eastward again at daybreak. Some-
times Phaethon, his rash, inexperienced son,
would take the reins and drive the solar chariot
25

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

too near the earth, causing the fruits to perish,
and the grass to wither, and the wells to dry up.
Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity, in
his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot
down his scorching arrows, causing pestilence
to spread over the land. Still other conceptions
clustered around the sun. Now it was the won-
derful treasure-house, into which no one could
look and live ; and again it was Ixion himself,
bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for
violence offered to Here, the queen of the blue
air.

This theory of ancient mythology is not only
beautiful and plausible, it is, in its essential
points, demonstrated. It stands on as firm a
foundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the
undulatory theory in molecular physics. It is
philology which has here enabled us to read the
primitive thoughts of mankind. A large num-
ber of the names of Greek gods and heroes have
no meaning in the Greek language ; but these
names occur also in Sanskrit, with plain physi-
cal meanings. In the Veda we find Zeus or
Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and
Sarameias or Hermes, meaning the breeze of a
summer morning. We find Athene (Ahana),
meaning the light of daybreak ; and we are thus
enabled to understand why the Greek described
her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. There,
too, we find Helena (Sarama), the fickle twilight,
26

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

whom the Panis, or night demons, who serve
as the prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, strive
to seduce from her allegiance to the solar mon-
arch. Even Achilleus (Aharyu) again confronts
us, with his captive Briseis (Brisaya's offspring) ;
and the fierce Kerberos (£arvara) barks on Vedic
ground in strict conformity to the laws of pho-
netics.1 Now, when the Hindu talked about
Father Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva, he
thought of the personified sky and clouds ; he
had not outgrown the primitive mental habits
of the race. But the Greek, in whose language
these physical meanings were lost, had long be-
fore the Homeric epoch come to regard Zeus
and Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achil-
leus, as mere persons, and in most cases the
originals of his myths were completely forgotten.
In the Vedas the Trojan War is carried on in
the sky, between the bright deities and the de-
mons of night ; but the Greek poet, influenced
perhaps by some dim historical tradition, has
located the contest on the shore of the Helles-
pont, and in his mind the actors, though super-

1 Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy
in his Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long
consideration I am still disposed to follow Max Miiller in
adopting them, with the possible exception of Achilleus.
With Mr. Mahaffy's suggestion (p. 52) that many of the
Homeric legends may have '•' clustered around some historical
basis," I fully agree ; as will appear, further on, from my
paper on " Juventus Mundi."
27

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

human, are still completely anthropomorphic.
Of the true origin of his epic story he knew
as little as Euhemeros, or Lord Bacon, or the
Abbe Banier.

After these illustrations, we shall run no risk
of being misunderstood when we define a myth
as, in its origin, an explanation, by the uncivi-
lized mind, of some natural phenomenon ; not
an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, — for the
ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in
myths the remnants of a refined primeval sci-
ence, — but an explanation. Primitive men had
no profound science to perpetuate by means of
allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to
talk in riddles when plain language would serve
their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure,
worked like our own, and when they spoke of
the far-darting sun-god they meant just what
they said, save that where we propound a sci-
entific theorem they constructed a myth.1 A
thing is said to be explained when it is classified
with other things with which we are already ac-
quainted. That is the only kind of explanation

1 "Les facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les
memes que celles qui engendront la philosophic, et ce n'est
pas sans raison que 1'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phe-
nomene de la plus riche mythologie a cote de la plus profonde
metaphysique." " La conception de la multiplicite dans
1'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez les peuples enfants ; c'est
la science chez les peuples arrives a 1'age mur." Renan,
Hist, des Langues Semitiques, torn. i. p. 9.
28

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

of which the highest science is capable. We
explain the origin, progress, and ending of a
thunderstorm when we classify the phenomena
presented by it along with other more familiar
phenomena of vaporization and condensation.
But the primitive man explained the same thing
to his own satisfaction when he had classified
it along with the well-known phenomena of
human volition, by constructing a theory of a
great black dragon pierced by the unerring ar-
rows of a heavenly archer. We consider the
nature of the stars to a certain extent explained
when they are classified as suns ; but the Mo-
hammedan compiler of the " Mishkat-ul-Ma'-
sabih " was content to explain them as missiles
useful for stoning the Devil ! Now, as soon as
the old Greek, forgetting the source of his con-
ception, began to talk of a human Oidipous
slaying a leonine Sphinx, and as soon as the
Mussulman began, if he ever did, to tell his
children how the Devil once got a good pelting
with golden bullets, then both the one and the
other were talking pure mythology.

We are justified, accordingly, in distinguish-
ing between a myth and a legend. Though the
words are etymologically parallel, and though
in ordinary discourse we may use them inter-
changeably, yet when strict accuracy is required,
it is well to keep them separate. And it is per-
haps needless, save for the sake of complete-
29

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ness, to say that both are to be distinguished
from stories which have been designedly fabri-
cated. The distinction may occasionally be sub-
tle, but is usually broad enough. Thus, the
story that Philip II. murdered his wife Eliza-
beth, is a misrepresentation ; but the story
that the same Elizabeth was culpably enam-
oured of her stepson Don Carlos, is a legend.
The story that Queen Eleanor saved the life
of her husband, Edward I., by sucking a wound
made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is a le-
gend ; but the story that Hercules killed a great
robber, Cacus, who had stolen his cattle, con-
ceals a physical meaning, and is a myth. While
a legend is usually confined to one or two local-
ities, and is told of not more than one or two
persons, it is characteristic of a myth that it is
spread, in one form or another, over a large
part of the earth, the leading incidents remain-
ing constant, while the names and often the
motives vary with each locality. This is partly
due to the immense antiquity of myths, dating
as they do from a period when many nations,
now widely separated, had not yet ceased to
form one people. Thus, many elements of the
myth of the Trojan War are to be found in the
Rig-Veda ; and the myth of St. George and the
Dragon is found in all the Aryan nations. But
we must not always infer that myths have a
common descent, merely because they resemble
30

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

each other. We must remember that the pro-
ceedings of the uncultivated mind are more or
less alike in all latitudes, and that the same
phenomenon might in various places independ-
ently give rise to similar stories.1 The myth
of Jack and the Bean-Stalk is found not only
among people of Aryan descent, but also among
the Zulus of South Africa, and again among the
American Indians. Whenever we can trace a
story in this way from one end of the world to
the other, or through a whole family of kindred
nations, we are pretty safe in assuming that we
are dealing with a true myth, and not with a
mere legend.

Applying these considerations to the Tell
myth, we at once obtain a valid explanation of
its origin. The conception of infallible skill in
archery, which underlies such a great variety
of myths and popular fairy-tales, is originally
derived from the inevitable victory of the sun
over his enemies, the demons of night, winter,
and tempest. Arrows and spears which never
miss their mark, swords from whose blow no
armour can protect, are invariably the weapons
of solar divinities or heroes. The shafts of
Bellerophon never fail to slay the black demon
of the rain-cloud, and the bolt of Phoibos
Chrysaor deals sure destruction to the serpent of

1 Cases coming under this head are discussed further on,
in my paper on " Myths of the Barbaric World."

31

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

winter. Odysseus, warring against the impious
night-heroes, who have endeavoured through-
out ten long years or hours of darkness to se-
duce from her allegiance his twilight bride,
the weaver of the never-finished web of vio-
let clouds, — Odysseus, stripped of his beg-
gar's raiment and endowed with fresh youth
and beauty by the dawn-goddess, Athene, en-
gages in no doubtful conflict as he raises the
bow which none but himself can bend. Nor is
there less virtue in the spear of Achilleus, in
the swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland's
stout blade Durandal, or in the brand Excali-
bur, with which Sir Bedivere was so loath to
part. All these are solar weapons, and so, too,
are the arrows of Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and
Hemingr, and William of Cloudeslee, whose
surname proclaims him an inhabitant of the
Phaiakian land. William Tell, whether of
Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the last reflection of
the beneficent divinity of daytime and summer,
constrained for a while to obey the caprice of
the powers of cold and darkness, as Apollo
served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bid-
ding of Eurystheus. His solar character is well
preserved, even in the sequel of the Swiss le-
gend, in which he appears no less skilful as a
steersman than as an archer, and in which, after
traversing, like Dagon, the tempestuous sea of
night, he leaps at daybreak in regained freedom
32

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

upon the land, and strikes down the oppressor
who has held him in bondage.

But the sun, though ever victorious in open
contest with his enemies, is nevertheless not
invulnerable. At times he succumbs to treach-
ery, is bound by the frost giants, or slain by
the demons of darkness. The poisoned shirt
of the cloud fiend Nessos is fatal even to the
mighty Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried
at last fails to save him from the craft of Hagen.
In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy
solar hero doomed to toil for the profit of others,
and to be cut off by an untimely death. The
more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe
old age, and triumphs again and again over
all the powers of darkness, must nevertheless
yield to the craving desire to visit new cities
and look upon new works of strange men, until
at last he is swallowed up in the western sea.
That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial
ocean should disappear beneath the western
waves is as intelligible as it is that the horned
Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea in
the far east. It is perhaps less obvious that
winter should be so frequently symbolized as a
thorn or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by
an arrow wound in the heel ; the thigh of
Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while
Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which after-
wards secures his recognition by his old servant,
33

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the dawn nymph Euryldeia ; Sigurd is slain by
a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistle-
toe ; and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty,
the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter
sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle.
In her cosmic palace all is locked in icy repose,
naught thriving save the ivy which defies the
cold, until the kiss of the golden-haired sun-
god reawakens life and activity.

The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in
innumerable stories of spell-bound maidens and
fair-featured youths, saints, martyrs, and heroes.
Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth,
that is supposed to slumber. Among the
American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said
to sleep through the winter months ; and at the
time of the falling leaves, by way of composing
himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe and
divinely smokes ; the blue clouds, gently float-
ing over the landscape, fill the air with the haze
of Indian summer. In the Greek myth the
shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in
a perennial slumber. The German Siegfried,
pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping until
he shall be again called forth to fight. In Swit-
zerland, by the Vierwaldstattersee, three Tells
are awaiting the hour when their country shall
again need to be delivered from the oppressor.
Charlemagne is reposing in the Untersberg,
sword in hand, waiting for the coming of Anti-
34

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

christ ; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his
time in Avallon ; and in a lofty mountain in
Thuringia, the great Emperor Frederic Barba-
rossa slumbers with his knights around him,
until the time comes for him to sally forth and
raise Germany to the first rank among the
kingdoms of the world. The same story is told
of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian of
Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil.
The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, having taken
refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the
heathen Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-
four years, and awoke to find a Christian em-
peror on the throne. The monk of Hilde-
sheim, in the legend so beautifully rendered by
Longfellow, doubting how with God a thousand
years ago could be as yesterday, listened three
minutes entranced by the singing of a bird in
the forest, and found, on waking from his rev-
erie, that a thousand years had flown. To the
same family of legends belong the notion that
St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the last
days of the world ; the myth of the enchanter
Merlin, spellbound by Vivien ; the story of
the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed
away fifty -seven years in a cave ; and Rip Van
Winkle's nap in the Catskills.1

1 A collection of these interesting legends may be found
in Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, of
which work this paper was originally a review.

35

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

We might go on almost indefinitely citing
household tales of wonderful sleepers ; but, on
the principle of the association of opposites, we
are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous
life and wakefulness, illustrated in the Wander-
ing Jew ; the dancers of Kolbeck ; Joseph of
Arimathaea with the Holy Grail ; the Wild
Huntsman, who to all eternity chases the red
deer ; the Captain of the Phantom Ship ; the
classic Tithonos ; and the Man in the Moon.

The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject
for the play of human fancy. Plutarch wrote a
treatise on them, but the myth-makers had
been before him. " Every one," says Mr.
Baring-Gould, " knows that the moon is inhab-
ited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his
back, who has been exiled thither for many cen-
turies, and who is so far off that he is beyond
the reach of death. He has once visited this
earth, if the nursery rhyme is to be credited
when it asserts that —

' The Man in the Moon
Came down too soon
And asked his way to Norwich ; '

but whether he ever reached that city the same
authority does not state." Dante calls him
Cain ; Chaucer has him put up there as a pun-
ishment for theft, and gives him a thorn bush
to carry ; Shakespeare also loads him with the
thorns, but by way of compensation gives him

36

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

a dog for a companion. Ordinarily, however,
his offence is stated to have been, not stealing,
but Sabbath-breaking, — an idea derived from
the Old Testament. Like the man mentioned
in the Book of Numbers, he is caught gather-
ing sticks on the Sabbath ; and, as an example
to mankind, he is condemned to stand forever
in the moon, with his bundle on his back. In-
stead of a dog, one German version places him
with a woman, whose crime was churning but-
ter on Sunday. She carries her butter- tub ; and
this brings us to Mother Goose again : —

" Jack and Jill went up the hill

To get a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after."

This may read like mere nonsense ; but there
is a point of view from which it may be safely
said that there is very little absolute nonsense
in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a
venerable one. In Icelandic mythology we read
that Jack and Jill were two children whom the
moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven.
They had been drawing water in a bucket,
which they were carrying by means of a pole
placed across their shoulders ; and in this atti-
tude they have stood to the present day in the
moon. Even now this explanation of the moon
spots is to be heard from the mouths of Swed-
ish peasants. They fall away one after the
37

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

other, as the moon wanes, and their water-pail
symbolizes the supposed connection of the
moon with rain-storms. Other forms of the
myth occur in Sanskrit.

The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the
ancient Germans was called Horsel, or Ursula,
who figures in Christian mediaeval mythology
as a persecuted saint, attended by a troop of
eleven thousand virgins, who all suffer martyr-
dom as they journey from England to Cologne.
The meaning of the myth is obvious. In Ger-
man mythology, England is the Phaiakian land
of clouds and phantoms ; the succubus^ leaving
her lover before daybreak, excuses herself on
the plea that " her mother is calling her in
England." 1 The companions of Ursula are the
pure stars, who leave the cloudland and suffer
martyrdom as they approach the regions of day.
In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure
Artemis ; but, in accordance with her ancient
character, she is likewise the sensual Aphro-
dite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this
brings us to the story of Tannhauser.

The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies
in Thuringia, between Eisenach and Gotha.
High up on its slope yawns a cavern, the Hor-

1 See Procopius, De Bella Gothico, iv. 20; Villemarque,
Barzas Breiz, i. 1 36. As a child I was instructed by an old
nurse that Van Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and de-
parted spirits.

38

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

selloch, or cave of Venus, within which is heard
a muffled roar, as of subterranean water. From
this cave, in old times, the frightened inhabitants
of the neighbouring valley would hear at night
wild moans and cries issuing, mingled with peals
of demon-like laughter. Here it was believed
that Venus held her court ; " and there were not
a few who declared that they had seen fair
forms of female beauty beckoning them from
the mouth of the chasm." * Tannhauser was a
Prankish knight and famous minnesinger, who,
travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, " saw
a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty
standing before him and beckoning him to her."
Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her,
whom he knew to be none other than Venus.
He descended to her palace in the heart of the
mountain, and there passed seven years in care-
less revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and
yearning for another glimpse of the pure light
of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin
Mother, who took compassion on him and
released him. He sought a village church, and
to priest after priest confessed his sin, without
obtaining absolution, until finally he had re-
course to the Pope. But the holy father, horri-
fied at the enormity of his misdoing, declared
that guilt such as his could never be remitted :
sooner should the staff in his hand grow green
2 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, vol. i. p. 197.

39

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

and blossom. " Then Tannhauser, full of de-
spair and with his soul darkened, went away,
and returned to the only asylum open to him,
the Venusberg. But lo ! three days after he had
gone, Pope Urban discovered that his pastoral
staff had put forth buds and had burst into
flower. Then he sent messengers after Tann-
hauser, and they reached the Horsel vale to
hear that a wayworn man, with haggard brow
and bowed head, had just entered the Horsel-
loch. Since then Tannhauser has not been
seen" (p. 201).

As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this
sad legend, in its Christianized form, is doubt-
less descriptive of the struggle between the new
and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser,
satiated with pagan sensuality, turns to Chris-
tianity for relief, but, repelled by the hypocrisy,
pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers,
gives up in despair, and returns to drown his
anxieties in his old debauchery.

But this is not the primitive form of the
myth, which recurs in the folk-lore of every
people of Aryan descent. Who, indeed, can read
it without being at once reminded of Thomas
of Erceldoune (or Horsel-hill), entranced by
the sorceress of the Eilden ; of the nightly vis-
its of Numa to the grove of the nymph Ege-
ria; of Odysseus held captive by the Lady
Kalypso ; and, last but not least, of the delight-
40

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

ful Arabian tale of Prince Ahmed and the Peri
Banou ? On his westward journey, Odysseus is
ensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the
amorous nymph of darkness, Kalypso (KctXvTrnu,
to veil or cover). So the zone of the moon-
goddess Aphrodite inveigles all-seeing Zeus to
treacherous slumber on Mount Ida ; and by a
similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in
unseemly idleness in Armida's golden paradise,
at the western verge of the world. The dis-
appearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit
cliff, lured by Venus Ursula, the pale goddess
of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance.

But solar and lunar phenomena are by no
means the only sources of popular mythology.
Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint Ger-
man picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the
Erlking, in which the whole wild pathos of the
story is compressed into one supreme moment ;
we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erl-
king, his long, spectral arms outstretched to
grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse,
the alarmed father clasping his darling to his
bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like
elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul
with their weird harps. There can be no better
illustration than is furnished by this terrible
scene of the magic power of mythology to in-
vest the simplest physical phenomena with the
most intense human interest ; for the true sig-

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

nificance of the whole picture is contained in
the father's address to his child, —

et Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind ;
In diirren Blattern sauselt der Wind."

The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well
known in the version of Robert Browning, leads
to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good peo-
ple of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or
day, by reason of the direful host of rats which
infested their town. One day came a strange
man in a bunting suit, and offered for five hun-
dred guilders to rid the town of the vermin.
The people agreed : whereupon the man took
out a pipe and piped, and instantly all the rats
in town, in an army which blackened the face
of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and
followed the piper until he piped them to the
river Weser, where they all jumped in and were
drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone,
the townsfolk refused to pay the piper, on the
ground that he was evidently a wizard. He went
away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day
reappeared, and putting his pipe to his mouth
blew a different air. Whereat all the little,
plump, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired children
came merrily running after him, their parents
standing aghast, not knowing what to do, while
he led them up a hill in the neighbourhood.
A door opened in the mountain-side, through
which he led them in, and they never were
42

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

seen again ; save one lame boy, who hobbled
not fast enough to get in before the door shut,
and who lamented for the rest of his life that he
had not been able to share the rare luck of his
comrades. In the street through which this
procession passed no music was ever afterward
allowed to be played. For a long time the town
dated its public documents from this fearful
calamity, and many authorities have treated it
as an historical event.1 Similar stories are told
of other towns in Germany, and, strange to say,
in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants
in England believe that angels pipe to children
who are about to die ; and in Scandinavia youths
are said to have been enticed away by the songs
of elf-maidens. In Greece the sirens by their
magic lay allured voyagers to destruction ; and
Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to
follow him. Here we reach the explanation.
For Orpheus is the wind sighing through un-
told acres of pine forest. " The piper is no
other than the wind, and the ancients held that
in the wind were the souls of the dead." To
this day the English peasantry believe that they
hear the wail of the spirits of unbaptized chil-
dren, as the gale sweeps past their cottage doors.
The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion
of two deities. He is the sun and also the wind ,•

2 Hence perhaps the adage, " Always remember to pay
the piper."

43

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

and in the latter capacity he bears away the
souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like
Hermes fulfils a double function, is supposed
to rush at night over the treetops, "accom-
panied by the scudding train of brave men's
spirits." And readers of recent French litera-
ture cannot fail to remember Erckmann-Cha-
trian's terrible story of the wild huntsman
Vittikab, and how he sped through the forest,
carrying away a young girl's soul.

Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulys-
ses, so is Goethe's Erlking none other than the
Piper of Hamelin. And the piper, in turn, is
the classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart
of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the Sanskrit
Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn
of Oberon, the lyre of Apollo (who, like the
piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by Jack
when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's
castle.1 And the father, in Goethe's ballad, is no
more than right when he assures his child that the
siren voice which tempts him is but the rustle of
the wind among the dried leaves ; for from such
a simple class of phenomena arose this entire
family of charming legends.

1 And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic
musician, who —

" Could harp a fish out o' the water,
Or bluid out of a stane,
Or milk out of a maiden's breast,
That bairns had never nane."

44

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

But why does the piper, who is a leader of
souls (Psycho-pompQs\ also draw rats after him ?
In answering this we shall have occasion to note
that the ancients by no means shared that curi-
ous prejudice against the brute creation which
is indulged in by modern anti-Darwinians. In
many countries rats and mice have been re-
garded as sacred animals ; but in Germany they
were thought to represent the human soul. One
story out of a hundred must suffice to illustrate
this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a servant-girl
fell asleep whilst her companions were shelling
nuts. They observed a little red mouse creep
from her mouth and run out of the window.
One of the fellows present shook the sleeper,
but could not wake her, so he moved her to
another place. Presently the mouse ran back to
the former place and dashed about, seeking the
girl ; not finding her, it vanished ; at the same
moment the girl died." 1 This completes the
explanation of the piper, and it also furnishes
the key to the horrible story of Bishop Hatto.

This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the
Rhine, in the middle of which stream he pos-
sessed a tower, now pointed out to travellers as
the Mouse Tower. In the year 970 there was
a dreadful famine, and people came from far
and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's
ample and well-filled granaries. Well, he told

, * Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, vol. ii. p. 159.

45

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

them all to go into the barn, and when they had
got in there, as many as could stand, he set fire to
the barn and burnt them all up, and went home
to eat a merry supper. But when he arose next
morning, he heard that an army of rats had eaten
all the corn in his granaries, and was now ad-
vancing to storm the palace. Looking from his
window, he saw the roads and fields dark with
them, as they came with fell purpose straight
toward his mansion. In frenzied terror he took
his boat and rowed out to the tower in the river.
But it was of no use : down into the water
marched the rats, and swam across, and scaled
the walls, and gnawed through the stones, and
came swarming in about the shrieking Bishop,
and ate him up, flesh, bones, and all. Now,
bearing in mind what was said above, there can
be no doubt that these rats were the souls of
those whom the Bishop had murdered. There
are many versions of the story in different
Teutonic countries, and in some of them the
avenging rats or mice issue directly, by a strange
metamorphosis, from the corpses of the victims.
St. Gertrude, moreover, the heathen Holda,
was symbolized as a mouse, and was said to lead
an army of mice ; she was the receiver of chil-
dren's souls. Odin, also, in his character of a
Psychopompos, was followed by a host of rats.1

1 Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic ter-
ror which Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse.

46

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

As the souls of the departed are symbolized
as rats, so is the psychopomp himself often
figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic counter-
part of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears
invested with canine attributes ; and countless
other examples go to show that by the early
Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a
great dog or wolf. As the fearful beast was heard
speeding by the windows or over the housetop,
the inmates trembled, for none knew but his
own soul might forthwith be required of him.
Hence, to this day, among ignorant people, the
howling of a dog under the window is supposed
to portend a death in the family. It is the fleet
greyhound of Hermes, come to escort the soul
to the river Styx.1

But the wind-god is not always so terrible.
Nothing can be more transparent than the
phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which
Hermes is described as acquiring the strength
of a giant while yet a babe in the cradle, as
sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of
Apollo, and driving them helter-skelter in va-
rious directions, then as crawling through the
keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking

1 In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person
who is dying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt
escort. The same custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule
et Cacus, p. 123.

47

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

into his cradle. He- is the Master Thief, who
can steal the burgomaster's horse from under
him and his wife's mantle from off her back,
the prototype not only of the crafty architect of
Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slave
who robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra
Morena. He furnishes in part the conceptions
of Boots and Reynard ; he is the prototype of
Paul Pry and peeping Tom of Coventry ; and
in virtue of his ability to contract or expand
himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the
Norse Tale,1 whom the lad persuades to enter
a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom the
fisherman releases from the bottle.

The very interesting series of myths and pop-
ular superstitions suggested by the storm-cloud
and the lightning must be reserved for a future
occasion. When carefully examined, they will
richly illustrate the conclusion which is the re-
sult of the present inquiry, that the marvellous
tales and quaint superstitions current in every
Aryan household have a common origin with
the classic legends of gods and heroes, which
formerly were alone thought worthy of the
student's serious attention. These stories —
some of them familiar to us in infancy, others

1 The Devil, who is proverbially «' active in a gale of
wind," is none other than Hermes.

48

THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

the delight of our maturer years — constitute
the debris, or alluvium, brought down by the
stream of tradition from the distant highlands
of ancient mythology.

September, 1870.

49

II

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

IN the course of my last summer's vaca-
tion, which was spent at a small inland
village, I came upon an unexpected illus-
tration of the tenacity with which conceptions
descended from prehistoric antiquity have now
and then kept their hold upon life. While sit-
ting one evening under the trees by the road-
side, my attention was called to the unusual
conduct of half a dozen men and boys who
were standing opposite. An elderly man was
moving slowly up and down the road, holding
with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped
like the letter Y inverted. With his palms
turned upward, he held in each hand a branch
of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed
upward ; but every few moments, as he halted
over a certain spot, the twig would gradually
bend downwards until it had assumed the like-
ness of a Y in its natural position, where it
would remain pointing to something in the
ground beneath. One by one the bystanders
proceeded to try the experiment, but with no
variation in the result. Something in the ground
50

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could
not pass over that spot without bending down
and pointing to it.

My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques
Aymar and Dousterswivel, as I perceived that
these men were engaged in sorcery. During the
long drought more than half the wells in the
village had become dry, and here was an attempt
to make good the loss by the aid of the god
Thor. These men were seeking water with a

divining rod. Here, alive before my eyes, was a
superstitious observance, which I had supposed
long since dead and forgotten by all men except
students interested in mythology.

As I crossed the road to take part in the
ceremony a farmer's boy came up, stoutly affirm-
ing his incredulity, and offering to show the

5*

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

company how he could carry the rod motion-
less across the charmed spot. But when he
came to take the weird twig he trembled with
an ill-defined feeling of insecurity as to the
soundness of his conclusions, and when he
stood over the supposed rivulet the rod bent
in spite of him, — as was not so very strange ;
for, with all his vague scepticism, the honest
lad had not, and could not be supposed to have,
the/0* scientifique of which Littre speaks.1

Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod ;
but something in my manner seemed at once to
excite the suspicion and scorn of the sorcerer.
" Yes, take it," said he, with uncalled-for vehe-
mence, " but you can't stop it ; there 's water
below here, and you can't help its bending, if
you break your back trying to hold it." So he
gave me the twig, and awaited, with a smile
which was meant to express withering sarcasm,
the discomfiture of the supposed scoffer. But
when I proceeded to walk four or five times
across the mysterious place, the rod pointing
steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our
friend became grave and began to philosophize.
" Well," said he, " you see your temperament

1 «« II faut que la cceur devienne ancien parmi les anciennes
choses, et la plenitude de 1'histoire ne se devoile qu'a celui
qui descend, ainsi dispose, dans le passe. Mais il faut que
1'esprit demeure moderne, et n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour
lui d'autre foi que la foi scientifique." Littre.

52

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

is peculiar ; the conditions ain't favourable in
your case ; there are some people who never
can work these things. But there 's water below
here, for all that, as you '11 find, if you dig for
it ; there 's nothing like a hazel rod for finding
out water."

Very true : there are some persons who never
can make such things work ; who somehow
always encounter " unfavourable conditions "
when they wish to test the marvellous powers
of a clairvoyant ; who never can make " Plan-
chette " move in conformity to the requirements
of any known alphabet ; who never see ghosts,
and never have " presentiments," save such as
are obviously due to association of ideas. The
ill-success of these persons is commonly ascribed
to their lack of faith ; but, in the majority of
cases, it might be more truly referred to the
strength of their faith, — faith in the constancy
of nature, and in the adequacy of ordinary hu-
man experience as interpreted by science.1 La
foi scientifique is an excellent preventive against
that obscure, though not uncommon, kind of
self-deception which enables wooden tripods
to write and tables to tip and hazel twigs to
twist upside down, without the conscious inter-

1 For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis tracing
t/ne of these illusions to its psychological sources, see the ac-
count of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De I' Intelligence t vol. i*
pp. 121-125.

53

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

vention of the performer. It was this kind of
faith, no doubt, which caused the discomfiture
of Jacques Aymar on his visit to Paris,1 and
which has in late years prevented persons from
obtaining the handsome prize offered by the
French Academy for the first authentic case of
clairvoyance.

But our village friend, though perhaps con-
structively right in his philosophizing, was cer-
tainly very defective in his acquaintance with the
time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he
extended his inquiries so as to cover the field of
Indo-European tradition, he would have learned
that the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white
and black thorn, the Hindu asvattha, and sev-
eral other woods are quite as efficient as the
hazel for the purpose of detecting water in times
of drought ; and in due course of time he would
have perceived that the divining rod itself is
but one among a large class of things to which
popular belief has ascribed, along with other
talismanic properties, the power of opening
the ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal
hidden treasures. Leaving him in peace, then,
with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for cooling

1 See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths,
vol. i. pp. 57—77. The learned author attributes the dis-
comfiture to the uncongenial Parisian environment ; which is
a style of reasoning much like that of my village sorcerer, I
fear.

54

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

springs in some future thirsty season, let us en-
deavour to elucidate the origin of this curious
superstition.

The detection of subterranean water is by no
means the only use to which the divining rod
has been put. Among the ancient Frisians it
was regularly used for the detection of criminals ;
and the reputation of Jacques Aymar was won
by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horrible
murder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has
been used from time immemorial by miners
for ascertaining the position of veins of metal ;
and in the days when talents were wrapped in
napkins and buried in the field, instead of being
exposed to the risks of financial speculation, the
divining rod was employed by persons covetous
of their neighbours' wealth. If Boulatruelle had
lived in the sixteenth century, he would have
taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to
search for the buried treasures of Jean Valjean.
It has also been applied to the cure of disease,
and has been kept in households, like a wizard's
charm, to insure general good-fortune and im-
munity from disaster.

As we follow the conception further into the
elfland of popular tradition, we come upon a
rod which not only points out the situation of
hidden treasure, but even splits open the ground
and reveals the mineral wealth contained therein.
In German legend, " a shepherd, who was driv-
55

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ing his flock over the Ilsenstein, having stopped
to rest, leaning on his staff, the mountain sud-
denly opened, for there was a springwort in his
staff without his knowing it, and the princess
[Use] stood before him. She bade him follow
her, and when he was inside the mountain she
told him to take as much gold as he pleased.
The shepherd filled all his pockets, and was
going away, when the princess called after him,
c Forget not the best.' So, thinking she meant
that he had not taken enough, he filled his hat
also ; but what she meant was his staff with the
springwort, which he had laid against the wall
as soon as he stepped in. But now, just as he
was going out at the opening, the rock suddenly
slammed together and cut him in two." ]

Here the rod derives its marvellous proper-
ties from the inclosed springwort, but in many
cases a leaf or flower is itself competent to open
the hillside. The little blue flower, forget-me-
not, about which so many sentimental associa-
tions have clustered, owes its name to the legends
told of its talismanic virtues.2 A man, travel-
ling on a lonely mountain, picks up a little blue
flower and sticks it in his hat. Forthwith' an
iron door opens, showing up a lighted passage-
way, through which the man advances into a

1 Kelly, Indo- European Folk- Lore, p. 177.

2 The story of the luck -flower is well told in verse by Mr.
Baring-Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq.

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

magnificent hall, where rubies and diamonds and
all other kinds of gems are lying piled in great
heaps on the floor. As he eagerly fills his pock-
ets his hat drops from his head, and when he
turns to go out the little flower calls after him,
" Forget me not ! " He turns back and looks
around, but is too bewildered with his good for-
tune to think of his bare head or of the luck-
flower which he has let fall. He selects several
more of the finest jewels he can find, and again
starts to go out ; but as he passes through the
door the mountain closes amid the crashing of
thunder, and cuts off one of his heels. Alone,
in the gloom of the forest, he searches in vain
for the mysterious door : it has disappeared for-
ever, and the traveller goes on his way, thank-
ful, let us hope, that he has fared no worse.

Sometimes it is a white lady, like the Princess
Use, who invites the finder of the luck-flower
to help himself to her treasures, and who utters
the enigmatical warning. The mountain where
the event occurred may be found almost any-
where in Germany, and one just like it stood in
Persia, in the golden prime of Haroun Al-
raschid. In the story of the Forty Thieves, the
mere name of the plant sesame serves as a talis-
man to open and shut the secret door which
leads into the robbers' cavern ; and when the
avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the con-
templation of the bags of gold and bales of rich
57

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

merchandise, forgets the magic formula, he meets
no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsen-
stein. In the story of Prince Ahmed, it is an
enchanted arrow which guides the young ad-
venturer through the hillside to the grotto of
the Peri Banou. In the tale of Baba Abdallah,
it is an ointment rubbed on the eyelid which
reveals at a single glance all the treasures hid-
den in the bowels of the earth.

The ancient Romans also had their rock-
breaking plant, called Saxifragay or " sassafras."
And the further we penetrate into this charmed
circle of traditions the more evident does it ap-
pear that the power of cleaving rocks or shat-
tering hard substances enters, as a primitive
element, into the conception of these treasure-
showing talismans. Mr. Baring-Gould has given
an excellent account of the rabbinical legends
concerning the wonderful schamir, by the aid
of which Solomon was said to have built his
temple. From Asmodeus, prince of the Jann,
Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, wrested the secret
of a worm no bigger than a barley-corn, which
could split the hardest substance. This worm
was called schamir. "If Solomon desired to
possess himself of the worm, he must find the
nest of the moor-hen, and cover it with a plate
of glass, so that the mother bird could not get
at her young without breaking the glass. She
would seek schamir for the purpose, and the

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

worm must be obtained from her." As the
Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew
the stones for that temple which was to be built
without sound of hammer, or axe, or any tool of
iron,1 he sent Benaiah to obtain it. According
to another account, schamirwas a mystic stone
which enabled Solomon to penetrate the earth in
search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni,
the wise king covered a raven's eggs with a
plate of crystal, and thus obtained schamir which
the bird brought in order to break the plate.2

In these traditions, which may possibly be
of Aryan descent, due to the prolonged inter-
course between the Jews and the Persians, a new
feature is added to those before enumerated : the
rock-splitting talisman is always found in the
possession of a bird. The same feature in the
myth reappears on Aryan soil. The springwort,
whose marvellous powers we have noticed in
the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained,
according to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in
a tree where a woodpecker keeps its young.
The bird flies away, and presently returns with

1 i Kings vi. 7.

2 Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the
temple, in Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs ana
Prophets, pp. 337, 338. And see the story of Diocletian's
ostrich, Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ed. Wright, vol. i. p. Ixiv.
See, also, the pretty story of the knight unjustly imprisoned,
id. p. cii.

59

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the springwort, which it applies to the plug,
causing it to shoot out with a loud explosion.
The same account is given in German folk-lore.
Elsewhere, as in Iceland, Normandy, and an-
cient Greece, the bird is an eagle, a swallow, an
ostrich, or a hoopoe.

In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the
schamir, or " raven-stone," also renders its pos-
sessor invisible, — a property which it shares
with one of the treasure-finding plants, the fern.1
In this respect it resembles the ring of Gyges,
as in its divining and rock-splitting qualities it
resembles that other ring which the African
magician gave to Aladdin, to enable him to de-
scend into the cavern where stood the wonder-
ful lamp.

In the north of Europe schamir appears
strangely and grotesquely metamorphosed. The
hand of a man that has been hanged, when dried

1 " We have the receipt of fern-seed. We walk invisible."
Shakespeare, Henry IF. See Ralston, Songs of the Russian
People, p. 98.

According to one North German tradition, the luck-flower
also will make its finder invisible at pleasure. But, as the
myth shrewdly adds, it is absolutely essential that the flower
be found by accident : he who seeks for it never finds it!
Thus all cavils are skilfully forestalled, even if not satisfactorily
disposed of. The same kind of reasoning is favoured by our
.modern dealers in mystery : somehow the "conditions " al-
ways are askew whenever a scientific observer wishes to test
their pretensions.

60

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

and prepared with certain weird unguents and
set on fire, is known as the Hand of Glory ;
and as it not only bursts open all safe locks,
but also lulls to sleep all persons within the
circle of its influence, it is of course invaluable
to thieves and burglars. I quote the following
story from Thorpe's " Northern Mythology : "
" Two fellows once came to Huy, who pre-
tended to be exceedingly fatigued, and when
they had supped would not retire to a sleeping-
room, but begged their host would allow them
to take a nap on the hearth. But the maid-
servant, who did not like the looks of the two
guests, remained by the kitchen door and
peeped through a chink, when she saw that one
of them drew a thief's hand from his pocket.,
the fingers of which, after having rubbed them
with an ointment, he lighted, and they all burned
except one. Again they held this finger to the
fire, but still it would not burn, at which they
appeared much surprised, and one said, l There
must surely be some one in the house who is
not yet asleep.' They then hung the hand with
its four burning fingers by the chimney, and
went out to call their associates. But the maid
followed them instantly and made the door fast,
then ran upstairs, where the landlord slept,
that she might wake him, but was unable, not-
withstanding all her shaking and calling. In
the mean time the thieves had returned and
61

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

were endeavouring to enter the house by a win-
dow, but the maid cast them down from the
ladder. They then took a different course, and
would have forced an entrance, had it not oc-
curred to the maid that the burning fingers
might probably be the cause of her master's
profound sleep. Impressed with this idea she
ran to the kitchen and blew them out, when the
master and his men-servants instantly awoke,
and soon drove away the robbers." The same
event is said to have occurred at Stainmore in
England ; and Torquemada relates of Mexican
thieves that they carry with them the left hand
of a woman who has died in her first childbed,
before which talisman all bolts yield and all
opposition is benumbed. In 1831 u some Irish
thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the
estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, county
Meath. They entered the house armed with a
dead man's hand with a lighted candle in it, be-
lieving in the superstitious notion that a candle
placed in a dead man's hand will not be seen
by any but those by whom it is used ; and also
that if a candle in a dead hand be introduced
into a house, it will prevent those who may be
asleep from awaking. The inmates, however,
were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the
hand behind them." l

1 Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of Eng-
land t p. 202.

62

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was
used, just like the divining rod, for the detec-
tion of buried treasures.

Here, then, we have a large and motley group
of objects — the forked rod of ash or hazel, the
springwort and the luck-flower, leaves, worms,
stones, rings, and dead men's hands — which
are for the most part competent to open the
way into cavernous rocks, and which all agree
in pointing out hidden wealth. We find, more-
over, that many of these charmed objects are
carried about by birds, and that some of them
possess, in addition to their generic properties,
the specific power of benumbing people's senses.
What, now, is the common origin of this whole
group of superstitions ? And since mythology
has been shown to be the result of primeval
attempts to explain the phenomena of nature,
what natural phenomenon could ever have given
rise to so many seemingly wanton conceptions ?
Hopeless as the problem may at first sight
seem, it has nevertheless been solved. In his
great treatise on " The Descent of Fire," Dr.
Kuhn has shown that all these legends and tra-
ditions are descended from primitive myths ex-
planatory of the lightning and the storm-cloud.1

To us, who are nourished from childhood on
the truths revealed by science, the sky is known

1 Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Fetters und des Gottertranks.
Berlin, 1859.

63

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

to be merely an optical appearance due to the
partial absorption of the solar rays in pass-
ing through a thick stratum of atmospheric
air ; the clouds are known to be large masses
of watery vapour, which descend in raindrops
when sufficiently condensed ; and the lightning
is known to be a flash of light accompanying an
electric discharge. But these conceptions are
extremely recondite, and have been attained
only through centuries of philosophizing and
after careful observation and laborious experi-
ment. To the untaught mind of a child or of
an uncivilized man, it seems far more natural
and plausible to regard the sky as a solid dome
of blue crystal, the clouds as snowy mountains,
or perhaps even as giants or angels, the light-
ning as a flashing dart or a fiery serpent. In
point of fact, we find that the conceptions ac-
tually entertained are often far more grotesque
than these. I can recollect once framing the
hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset
were transient apparitions, vouchsafed us by
way of warning, of that burning Calvinistic hell
with which my childish imagination had been
unwisely terrified;1 and I have known of a

1 " Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on asfen ? Ic
the secge, forthon heo locath on helle. — Tell me, why is the
sun red at even ? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell."
Thorpe, Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 1 1 $ , apud Tylor,
Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 63. Barbaric thought had
partly anticipated my childish theory.
64

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

four-year-old boy who thought that the snowy
clouds of noonday were the white robes of the
angels hung out to dry in the sun.1 My little
daughter is anxious to know whether it is ne-
cessary to take a balloon in order to get to the
place where God lives, or whether the same end
can be accomplished by going to the horizon
and crawling up the sky ; 2 the Mohammedan
of old was working at the same problem when
he called the rainbow the bridge Es-Sirat, over
which souls must pass on their way to heaven.
According to the ancient Jew, the sky was a
solid plate, hammered out by the gods, and
spread over the earth in order to keep up the
ocean overhead ; 3 but the plate was full of
little windows, which were opened whenever it
became necessary to let the rain come through.4

1 " Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder,
that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that
they are shaking up the feather-beds in heaven." Baring-
Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 172.

2 " The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the
horizon and incloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners
papalangi, or * heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from
another world outside." Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 268.

8 •" Way-yo'hmer 'helohim yehi raquianh be-thok ham-
mayim wihi mavdil beyn mayim la-mayim. — And said the
gods, Let there be a hammered plate in the midst of the wa-
ters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters."
Genesis i. 6.

* Genesis vii. 1 1.

65

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

With equal plausibility the Greek represented
the rainy sky as a sieve in which the daughters
of Danaos were vainly trying to draw water ;
while to the Hindu the rain-clouds were celes-
tial cattle milked by the wind-god. In primi-
tive Aryan lore, the sky itself was a blue sea,
and the clouds were ships sailing over it ; and
an English legend tells how one of these ships
once caught its anchor on a gravestone in the
churchyard, to the great astonishment of the
people who were coming out of church. Cha-
ron's ferry-boat was one of these vessels, and
another was Odin's golden ship, in which the
souls of slain heroes were conveyed to Valhalla.
Hence it was once the Scandinavian practice
to bury the dead in boats ; and in Altmark a
penny is still placed in the mouth of the corpse,
that it may have the means of paying its fare to
the ghostly ferryman.1 In such a vessel drifted
the Lady of Shalott on her fatal voyage ; and
of similar nature was the dusky barge, " dark
as a funeral scarf from stem to stern," in which

1 See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 120; who
states also that in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a
small boat, placed on top of the funeral pile.

In their character of cows, also, the clouds were regarded
as psychopomps ; and hence it is still a popular superstition
that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a death in the
family.

66

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

Arthur was received by the black-hooded
queens.1

But the fact that a natural phenomenon was
explained in one way did not hinder it from be-
ing explained in a dozen other ways. The fact
that the sun was generally regarded as an all-
conquering hero did not prevent its being called
an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on the
waters, or Ixion's wheel, or the eye of Poly-
phemos, or the stone of Sisyphos, which was no
sooner pushed up to the zenith than it rolled
down to the horizon. So the sky was not only
a crystal dome or a celestial ocean, but it was
also the Aleian land through which Bellerophon
wandered, the country of the Lotos-eaters,
or again the realm of the Graiai beyond the
twilight ; and finally it was personified and wor-
shipped as Dyaus or Varuna, the Vedic proto-
types of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos. The
clouds, too, had many other representatives

1 The sun-god Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblath-
nir, which is thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda : " She
is so great that all the vEsir, with their weapons and war-
gear, may find room on board her ; " but " when there is
no need of faring on the sea in her, she is made . . . with
so much craft that Freyr may fold her together like a cloth,
and keep her in his bag." This same virtue was possessed by
the fairy pavilion which the Peri Banou gave to Ahmed ; the
cloud which is no bigger than a man's hand may soon over-
spread the whole heaven, and shade the Sultan's army from
the solar rays.

6?

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

besides ships and cows. In a future paper it
will be shown that they were sometimes re-
garded as angels or houris ; at present it more
nearly concerns us to know that they appear,
throughout all Aryan mythology, under the
form of birds. It used to be a matter of hope-
less wonder to me that Aladdin's innocent re-
quest for a roc's egg to hang in the dome of
his palace should have been regarded as a crime
worthy of punishment by the loss of the won-
derful lamp ; the obscurest part of the whole
affair being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allu-
sion to the egg as his master : " Wretch ! dost
thou command me to bring thee my master,
and hang him up in the midst of this vaulted
dome ? " But the incident is to some extent
cleared of its mystery when we learn that the
roc's egg is the bright sun, and that the roc
itself is the rushing storm-cloud which, in the
tale of Sindbad, haunts the sparkling starry fir-
mament, symbolized as a valley of diamonds.1
According to one Arabic authority, the length

1 Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, represent-
ing it as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence
of the extinct dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth,
well preserves its true character when it describes it as " a
bird which in flying obscures the sun, and of whose quills are
made water-tuns." See Nouveau Journal Asiatique, torn,
xii. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the " Blue
Belt ' ' belongs to the same species.

68

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

of its wings is ten thousand fathoms. But in
European tradition it dwindles from these huge
dimensions to the size of an eagle, a raven, or
a woodpecker. Among the birds enumerated
by Kuhn and others as representing the storm-
cloud are likewise the wren, or " kinglet "
(French roitelet] ; the owl, sacred to Athene ;
the cuckoo, stork, and sparrow ; and the red-
breasted robin, whose name Robert was origi-
nally an epithet of the lightning-god Thor. In
certain parts of France it is still believed that
the robbing of a wren's nest will render the cul-
prit liable to be struck by lightning. The same
belief was formerly entertained in Teutonic
countries with respect to the robin ; and I sup-
pose that from this superstition is descended
the prevalent notion, which I often encountered
in childhood, that there is something peculiarly
wicked in killing robins.

Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the
various myths of schamir, is the dark storm-
cloud, so the rock-splitting worm or plant or
pebble which the bird carries in its beak and
lets fall to the ground is nothing more or less
thun the flash of lightning carried and dropped
by the cloud. " If the cloud was supposed to
be a great bird, the lightnings were regarded as
vt rithing worms or serpents in its beak. These
fiery serpents, eXi/acu y/oa/i/xoetSoj? (£e/>o-
i, are believed in to this day by the Cana-

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

dian Indians, who call the thunder their hiss-
ing." *

But these are not the only mythical concep-
tions which are to be found wrapped up in
the various myths of schamir and the divining
rod. The persons who told these stories were
not weaving ingenious allegories about thunder-
storms ; they were telling stories, or giving
utterance to superstitions, of which the original
meaning was forgotten. The old grannies who,
along with a stoical indifference to the fate of
quails and partridges, used to impress upon me
the wickedness of killing robins, did not add
that I should be struck by lightning if I failed
to heed their admonitions. They had never
heard that the robin was the bird of Thor ; they
merely rehearsed the remnant of the supersti-
tion which had survived to their own times,
while the essential part of it had long since faded
from recollection. The reason for regarding a
robin's life as more sacred than a partridge's had
been forgotten ; but it left behind, as was natu-
ral, a vague recognition of that mythical sanc-
tity. The primitive meaning of a myth fades
away as inevitably as the primitive meaning of
a word or phrase ; and the rabbins who told of
a worm which shatters rocks no more thought
of the writhing thunderbolts than the modern

1 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, vol. ii. p. 146. Com-
pare Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 237, seq.
70

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

reader thinks of oyster shells when he sees the
word ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer
as he writes the phrase good-by. It is only in
its callow infancy that the full force of a myth
is felt, and its period of luxuriant development
dates from the time when its physical signifi-
cance is lost or obscured. It was because the
Greek had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright
sky, that he could make him king over an
anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dy-
aus, who carried his significance in his name as
plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained
such an exalted position ; he yielded to deities
of less obvious pedigree, such as Brahma and
Vishnu.

Since, therefore, the myth-tellers recounted
merely the wonderful stories which their own
nurses and grandmas had told them, and had
no intention of weaving subtle allegories or
wrapping up a physical truth in mystic em-
blems, it follows that they were not bound to
avoid incongruities or to preserve a philosophi-
cal symmetry in their narratives. In the great
majority of complex myths, no such symmetry
is to be found. A score of different mythical
conceptions would get wrought into the same
story, and the attempt to pull them apart and
construct a single harmonious system of con-
ceptions out of the pieces must often end in
ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is unques-
71

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

tionably the sun, so is the eye of Polyphemos,
which Odysseus puts out.1 But the Greek poet
knew nothing of the incongruity, for he was
thinking only of a superhuman hero freeing
himself from a giant cannibal ; he knew no-
thing of Sanskrit, or of comparative mythology,
and the sources of his myths were as com-
pletely hidden from his view as the sources of
the Nile.

We need not be surprised, then, to find that
in one version of the schamir myth the cloud
is the bird which carries the worm, while in
another version the cloud is the rock or moun-
tain which the talisman cleaves open ; nor need
we wonder at it, if we find stories in which the
two conceptions are mingled together without
regard to an incongruity which in the mind of
the myth-teller no longer exists.2

1 « 'If Polyphemos' s eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the
solar hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of
suicide." Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See, also, Brown,
Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. This objection would be relevant only
in case Homer were supposed to be constructing an allegory
with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has no validity
whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known
nothing of the incongruity.

2 The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials
in a way which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He
describes Indra (the sun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-
mountains with his sword, but also cutting off their wings
and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf, Bhagavatd
Pur ana, vi. 12, 26.

72

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

In early Aryan mythology there is nothing
by which the clouds are more frequently repre-
sented than by rocks or mountains. Such were
the Symplegades, which, charmed by the harp
of the wind-god Orpheus, parted to make way
for the talking ship Argo, with its crew of solar
heroes.1 Such, too, were the mountains Ossa
and Pelion, which the giants piled up one upon
another in their impious assault upon Zeus, the
lord of the bright sky. As Mr. Baring-Gould
observes: "The ancient Aryan had the same
name for cloud and mountain. To him the
piles of vapour on the horizon were so like
Alpine ranges that he had but one word whereby
to designate both.2 These great mountains of
heaven were opened by the lightning. In the
sudden flash he beheld the dazzling splendour
within, but only for a moment, and then, with

1 Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, ex-
planation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through
which the solar ship, having passed successfully once, may
henceforth pass forever. See the details of the evidence in his
Primitive Culture, i. 315.

2 The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, means
both "cloud" and "mountain." " In the Edda, too, the
rocks, said to have been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are
supposed to be intended for clouds. In Old Norse Klakkr
means both cloud and rock ; nay, the English word cloud
itself has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon clud, rock.
See Justi, Orient und Occident, vol. ii. p. 62." Max Miiller,
Rig- Veda, vol. i. p. 44.

73

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

a crash, the celestial rocks closed again. Believ-
ing these vaporous piles to contain resplendent
treasures of which partial glimpse was obtained
by mortals in a momentary gleam, tales were
speedily formed, relating the adventures of some
who had succeeded in entering these treasure
mountains."

This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-
rock by the arrow of Ahmed, the resistless ham-
mer of Thor, the spear of Odin, the trident of
Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The forked
streak of light is the archetype of the divining
rod in its oldest form, — that in which it not
only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the
staff of the Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the
enchanted crypt and reveals them to the aston-
ished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential
to the divining rod, from whatever tree it be
chosen, is that it shall be forked.

It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons
which led the ancients to speak of the light-
ning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked
wand ; but when we inquire why it was some-
times symbolized as a flower or leaf, or when
we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as
the ash, hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were
supposed to be in a certain sense embodiments
of it, we are entering upon a subject too com-
plicated to be satisfactorily treated within the
limits of the present paper. It has been said
74

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

that the point of resemblance between a cow
and a comet, that both have tails, was quite
enough for the primitive word-maker : it was
certainly enough for the primitive myth-teller.1
Sometimes the pinnate shape of a leaf, the fork-
ing of a branch, the tri-cleft corolla, or even the
red colour of a flower, seems to have been suffi-
cient to determine the association of ideas. The
Hindu commentators of the Veda certainly lay
great stress on the fact that the palasa, one
of their lightning-trees, is trident-leaved. The
mistletoe branch is forked, like a wish-bone,2
and so is the stem which bears the forget-me-
not or wild scorpion grass. So, too, the leaves
of the Hindu ficus religiosa resemble long spear-
heads.3 But in many cases it is impossible for

1 In accordance with the mediaeval " doctrine of signa-
tures," it was maintained " that the hard, stony seeds of the
Gromwell must be good for gravel, and the knotty tubers
of scrophularia for scrofulous glands ; while the scaly pappus
of scaliosa showed it to be a specific in leprous diseases, the
spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a sovereign remedy
for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in the fis-
sures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the bladder."
Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, introd., p. xiv.
See, also, Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris, 1866.

2 Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, it-
self belongs to the same family of talismans as the divining
tod.

8 The ash, on the other hand, has been from time im-
memorial used for spears in many parts of the Aryan domain.
The word essc meant, in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently " ash"

75

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

us to determine with confidence the reasons
which may have guided primitive men in their
choice of talismanic plants. In the case of some
of these stories, it would no doubt be wasting
ingenuity to attempt to assign a mythical origin
for each point of detail. The ointment of the
dervise, for instance, in the Arabian tale, has
probably no special mythical significance, but
was rather suggested by the exigencies of the
story, in an age when the old mythologies were
so far disintegrated and mingled together that
any one talisman would serve as well as another
the purposes of the narrator. But the lightning
plants of Indo-European folk-lore cannot be
thus summarily disposed of; for however diffi-
cult it may be for us to perceive any connection
between them and the celestial phenomena which
they represent, the myths concerning them are
so numerous and explicit as to render it certain
that some such connection was imagined by the
myth-makers. The superstition concerning the
hand of glory is not so hard to interpret. In
the mythology of the Finns, the storm-cloud is
a black man with a bright copper hand ; and in
Hindustan, Indra Savitar, the deity who slays

tree " or " spear ; " and the same is, or has been, true of
the French fresne and the Greek /leXt'a. The root of eesc
appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw " or " lance," whence
asa, " a bow," and asana, " an arrow." See Pictet, Ori-
gines Indo-Europeennes, i. 222.

76

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

the demon of the cloud, is golden-handed. The
selection of the hand of a man who has been
hanged is probably due to the superstition which
regarded the storm-god Odin as peculiarly the
lord of the gallows. The man who is raised upon
the gallows is placed directly in the track of
the wild huntsman, who comes with his hounds
to carry off the victim ; and hence the notion,
which, according to Mr. Kelly, is "very com-
mon in Germany and not extinct in England,"
that every suicide by hanging is followed by a
storm.

The paths of comparative mythology are
devious, but we have now pursued them long
enough, I believe, to have arrived at a tolerably
clear understanding of the original nature of the
divining rod. Its power of revealing treasures
has been sufficiently explained ; and its affinity
for water results so obviously from the character
of the lightning myth as to need no further
comment. But its power of detecting criminals
still remains to be accounted for.

In Greek mythology, the being which detects
and punishes crime is the Erinys, the prototype
of the Latin Fury, figured by late writers as a
horrible monster with serpent locks. But this
is a degradation of the original conception. The
name Erinys did not originally mean Fury, and
it cannot be explained from Greek sources alone.
It appears in Sanskrit as Saranyu, a word which
77

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

signifies the light of morning creeping over the
sky. And thus we are led to the startling
conclusion that, as the light of morning re-
veals the evil deeds done under the cover of
night, so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came to
be regarded under one aspect as the terrible
detector and avenger of iniquity. Yet startling
as the conclusion is, it is based on established
laws of phonetic change, and cannot be gain-
said.

But what has the avenging daybreak to do
with the lightning and the divining rod ? To
the modern mind the association is not an
obvious one : in antiquity it was otherwise.
Myths of the daybreak and myths of the light-
ning often resemble each other so closely that,
except by a delicate philological analysis, it is
difficult to distinguish the one from the other.
The reason is obvious. In each case the phe-
nomenon to be explained is the struggle be-
tween the day-god and one of the demons of
darkness. There is essentially no distinction to
the mind of the primitive man between the
Panis, who steal Indra's bright cows and keep
them in a dark cavern all night, and the throt-
tling snake Ahi, or Echidna, who imprisons the
waters in the stronghold of the thunder-cloud
and covers the earth with a short-lived dark-
ness. And so the poisoned arrows of Bellero-
phon, which slay the storm dragon, differ in no

78

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

essential respect from the shafts with which
Odysseus slaughters the night demons who
have for ten long hours beset his mansion.
Thus the divining rod, representing as it does
the weapon of the god of day, comes legiti-
mately enough by its function of detecting and
avenging crime.

But the lightning not only reveals strange
treasures and gives water to the thirsty land
and makes plain what is doing under cover of
darkness ; it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or
paralyzes. Thus the head of the Gorgon Me-
dusa turns into stone those who look upon it.
Thus the ointment of the dervise, in the tale
of Baba Abdallah, not only reveals all the trea-
sures of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds
the unhappy man who tests its powers. And
thus the hand of glory, which bursts open bars
and bolts, benumbs also those who happen to
be near it. Indeed, few of the favoured mortals
who were allowed to visit the caverns opened
by sesame, or the luck-flower, escaped without
disaster. The monkish tale of " The Clerk and
the Image," in which the primeval mythical
features are curiously distorted, well illustrates
this point.

In the city of Rome there formerly stood

an image, with its right hand extended, and on

its forefinger the words " Strike here." Many

wise men puzzled in vain over the meaning of

79

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the inscription ; but at last a certain priest ob-
served that whenever the sun shone on the fig-
ure, the shadow of the finger was discernible on
the ground at a little distance from the statue.
Having marked the spot, he waited until mid-
night, and then began to dig. At last his spade
struck upon something hard. It was a trap-
door, below which a flight of marble steps de-
scended into a spacious hall, where many men
were sitting in solemn silence amid piles of gold
and diamonds and long rows of enamelled
vases. Beyond this he found another room, a
gyn<ecium filled with beautiful women reclining
on richly embroidered sofas ; yet here, too, all
was profound silence. A superb banqueting-
hall next met his astonished gaze ; then a silent
kitchen ; then granaries loaded with forage ;
then a stable crowded with motionless horses.
The whole place was brilliantly lighted by a
carbuncle which was suspended in one corner
of the reception room ; and opposite stood an
archer, with his bow and arrow raised, in the act
of taking aim at the jewel. As the priest passed
back through this hall, he saw a diamond-hiked
knife lying on a marble table ; and wishing to
carry away something wherewith to accredit his
story, he reached out his hand to take it ; but
no sooner had he touched it than all was dark.
The archer had shot with his arrow,, the bright
jewel was shivered into a thousand pieces, the
80

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

staircase had fled, and the priest found himself
buried alive.1

Usually, however, though the lightning is
wont to strike dead, with its basilisk glance,
those who rashly enter its mysterious caverns,
it is regarded rather as a benefactor than as a
destroyer. The feelings with which the myth-
making age contemplated the thunder-shower
as it revived the earth paralyzed by a long
drought are shown in the myth of Oidipous.
The Sphinx, whose name signifies " the one
who binds," is the demon who sits on the cloud-
rock and imprisons the rain, muttering dark
sayings which none but the all-knowing sun
may understand. The flash of solar light, which
causes the monster to fling herself down from
the cliff with a fearful roar, restores the land
to prosperity. But besides this, the association
of the thunderstorm with the approach of sum-
mer has produced many myths in which the
lightning is symbolized as the life-renewing
wand of the victorious sun-god. Hence the
use of the divining rod in the cure of disease ;
and hence the large family of schamir myths in

1 Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the Faery
Queen, where, however, the knight fares better than this poor
priest. Usually these lightning caverns were like Ixion's
treasure-house, into which none might look and live. This
conception is the foundation of part of the story of Blue-Beard
and of the Arabian tale of the third one-eyed Calender.

81

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

which the dead are restored to life by leaves or
herbs. In Grimm's tale of the Three Snake
Leaves, " a prince is buried alive (like Sindbad)
with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approach-
ing her body, he cuts it in three pieces. Pre-
sently another snake, crawling from the corner,
saw the other lying dead, and going away soon
returned with three green leaves in its mouth ;
then laying the parts of the body together so
as to join, it put one leaf on each wound, and
the dead snake was alive again. The prince,
applying the leaves to his wife's body, restores
her also to life." l In the Greek story, told by
JEli&n and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with
the corpse of Glaukos, which he is ordered to
restore to life. He kills a dragon which is ap-
proaching the body, but is presently astonished
at seeing another dragon come with a blade of
grass and place it upon its dead companion,
which instantly rises from the ground. Polyi-
dos takes the same blade of grass, and with it
resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs
in the Hindu story of Panch Phul Ranee, and
in Fouque's " Sir Elidoc," which is founded
on a Breton legend.

We need not wonder, then, at the extraordi-
nary therapeutic properties which are in all Ar-
yan folk-lore ascribed to the various lightning-

1 Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. i. p. 161.

82

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made
of mistletoe twigs, and the plant is supposed to
be a specific against epilepsy and an antidote
for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed
through holes in ash-trees in order to cure them
of hernia. Ash rods are used in some parts of
England for the cure of diseased sheep, cows,
and horses ; and in particular they are supposed
to neutralize the venom of serpents. The no-
tion that snakes are afraid of an ash-tree is not
extinct even in the United States. The other
day I was told, not by an old granny, but by a
man fairly educated and endowed with a very
unusual amount of good common sense, that
a rattlesnake will sooner go through fire than
creep over ash leaves or into the shadow of an
ash-tree. Exactly the same statement is made
by Pliny, who adds that if you draw a circle
with an ash rod around the spot of ground on
which a snake is lying, the animal must die
of starvation, being as effectually imprisoned as
Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In Corn-
wall it is believed that a blow from an ash
stick will instantly kill any serpent. The ash
shares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A
Swedish peasant will tell you that snakes may
be deprived of their venom by a touch with a
hazel wand ; and when an ancient Greek had
occasion to make his bed in the woods, he se-

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

lected fern leaves if possible, in the belief that
the smell of them would drive away poisonous
animals.1

But the beneficent character of the light-
ning appears still more clearly in another class
of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of
light coming down from heaven was typical of
the original descent of fire for the benefit and
improvement of the human race. The Sioux
Indians account for the origin of fire by a myth
of unmistakable kinship ; they say that " their
first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks
which a friendly panther struck from the rocks
as he scampered up a stony hill." 2 This pan-
ther is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan
bird which drops schamir. But the Aryan im-
agination hit upon a far more remarkable con-
ception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by
a process similar to that employed by Count
Rumford in his experiments on the generation
of heat by friction. They first wound a couple
of cords around a pointed stick in such a way
that the unwinding of the one would wind up
the other, and then, placing the point of the
stick against a circular disk of wood, twirled it
rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings.
This instrument is called a chark, and is still

i Kelly, Indo-European Folk-lore, pp. 147, 183, 1 86,

193-
3 Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.

84

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

used in South Africa,1 in Australia, in Sumatra,
and among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Rus-
sians found it in Kamtchatka ; and it was for-
merly employed in America, from Labrador to
the Straits of Magellan.2 The Hindus churned
milk by a similar process ; 3 and in order to ex-
plain the thunderstorm, a Sanskrit poem tells
how " once upon a time the Devas, or gods,
and their opponents, the Asuras, made a truce,
and joined together in churning the ocean to
procure amrita, the drink of immortality. They
took Mount Mandara for a churning stick, and,
wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for
a rope, they made the mountain spin round to

1 Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, i. 173, note 12.

2 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238 ; Primitive
Culture, vol. ii. p. 254 ; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p.
409.

"Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and
wood, and prepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment,
he lighted thus. He got a block of wood, in the middle of
which he made a hole ; then he cut and pointed a long stick,
and inserting the point into the block, worked it round be-
tween his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity.
Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after
it burst into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices
of shark and roasted them." Reade, Never too Late to
Mend, chap, xxxviii.

8 The production of fire by the drill is often called churn-
ing, e. g., " He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and
churned it, and kindled a fire." Callaway, Zulu Nursery
Tales, i. 1 74.

85

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

and fro, the Devas pulling at the serpent's tail,
and the Asuras at its head." l In this myth
the churning stick, with its flying serpent-cords,
is the lightning, and the amrita, or drink of
immortality, is simply the rain-water, which in
Aryan folk-lore possesses the same healing vir-
tues as the lightning. " In Sclavonic myths it is
the water of life which restores the dead earth,
a water brought by a bird from the depths of
a gloomy cave." 2 It is the celestial soma or
mead which Indra loves to drink; it is the
ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods ; it is
the charmed water which in the Arabian Nights
restores to human shape the victims of wicked
sorcerers ; and it is the elixir of life which me-
diaeval philosophers tried to discover, and in
quest of which Ponce de Leon traversed the
wilds of Florida.3

The most interesting point in this Hindu
myth is the name of the peaked mountain
Mandara, or Manthara, which the gods and
devils took for their churning stick. The word
means " a churning stick," and it appears also,
with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the

1 Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore , p. 39. Burnouf,
Bhagavata Pur ana, viii. 6, 32.

2 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149.

8 It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the
'« holy water " of the Roman Catholic.

86

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

fire drill, pramantha. Now Kuhn has proved
that this name, pramantha, is etymologically
identical with Prometheus, the name of the bene-
ficent Titan, who stole fire from heaven and be-
stowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons.
This sublime personage was originally nothing
but the celestial drill which churns fire out of
the clouds ; but the Greeks had so entirely for-
gotten his origin that they interpreted his name
as meaning " the one who thinks beforehand,"
and accredited him with a brother, Epimetheus,
or " the one who thinks too late." The Greeks
had adopted another name, trypanon, for their
fire drill, and thus the primitive character of
Prometheus became obscured.

I have said above that it was regarded as ab-
solutely essential that the divining rod should
be forked. To this rule, however, there was
one exception, and if any further evidence be
needed to convince the most sceptical that the
divining rod is nothing but a symbol of the
lightning, that exception will furnish such evi-
dence. For this exceptional kind of divining
rod was made of a pointed stick rotating in a
block of wood, and it was the presence of hid-
den water or treasure which was supposed to
excite the rotatory motion.

In the myths relating to Prometheus, the
lightning-god appears as the originator of civili-

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

zation, sometimes as the creator of the human
race, and always as its friend,1 suffering in its
behalf the most fearful tortures at the hands of
the jealous Zeus. In one story he creates man
by making a clay image and infusing into it a
spark of the fire which he had brought from
heaven ; in another story he is himself the first
man. In the Peloponnesian myth Phoroneus,
who is Prometheus under another name, is the
first man, and his mother was an ash-tree. In
Norse mythology, also, the gods were said to
have made the first man out of the ash-tree
Yggdrasil. The association of the heavenly fire
with the life-giving forces of nature is very com-
mon in the myths of both hemispheres, and in
view of the facts already cited it need not sur-
prise us. Hence the Hindu Agni and the Norse
Thor were patrons of marriage, and in Norway
the most lucky day on which to be married is
still supposed to be Thursday, which in old
times was the day of the fire-god.2 Hence the
lightning plants have divers virtues in matters
pertaining to marriage. The Romans made
their wedding torches of white-thorn; hazel-

1 In the Vedas the rain-god Soma, originally the personi-
fication of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to
men life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et
Cafus, p. 85. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 277.

2 We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the
Greek fire-god Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.

88

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

nuts are still used all over Europe in divina-
tions relating to the future lover or sweetheart ; *
and under a mistletoe bough it is allowable for
a gentleman to kiss a lady. A vast number
of kindred superstitions are described by Mr.
Kelly, to whom I am indebted for many of
these examples.2

Thus we reach at last the completed concep-
tion of the divining rod, or as it is called in this
sense the wish rod, with its kindred talismans,
from Aladdin's lamp and the purse of Bedred-
din Hassan, to the Sangreal, the philosopher's
stone, and the goblets of Oberon and Tristram.
These symbols of the reproductive energies of
nature, which give to the possessor every good
and perfect gift, illustrate the uncurbed belief
in the power of wish which the ancient man
shared with modern children. In the Norse
story of Frodi's quern, the myth assumes a
whimsical shape. The prose Edda tells of a

1 " Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves
plucked at hazard from the common ash are worn in the
breast for the purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting
a dilatory lover. The leaves of the yellow trefoil are sup-
posed to possess similar virtues." Harland and Wilkinson,
Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20.

2 '* In Peru, a mighty and far- worshipped deity was Cat-
equil, the thunder-god, ... he who in thunder-flash and
clap hurls from his sling the small, round, smooth thunder-
stones, treasured in the villages as fire fetiches and charms to
kindle the flames of love. " Tylor, op. fit. vol. ii. p. 239.

89

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

primeval age of gold, when everybody had
whatever he wanted. This was because the
giant Frodi had a mill which ground out peace
and plenty and abundance of gold withal, so that
it lay about the roads like pebbles. Through
the inexcusable avarice of Frodi, this wonderful
implement was lost to the world. For he kept
his maid-servants working at the mill until they
got out of patience, and began to make it grind
out hatred and war. Then came a mighty sea-
rover by night and slew Frodi and carried away
the maids and the quern. When he got well
out to sea, he told them to grind out salt, and
so they did with a vengeance. They ground the
ship full of salt and sank it, and so the quern
was lost forever, but the sea remains salt unto
this day.

Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the
sun-god Fro or Freyr, and observes that the
magic mill is only another form of the fire-
churn, or chark. According to another version
the quern is still grinding away and keeping
the sea salt, and over the place where it lies
there is a prodigious whirlpool or maelstrom
which sucks down ships.

In its completed shape, the lightning wand
is the caduceus, or rod of Hermes. I observed,
in the preceding paper, that in the Greek con-
ception of Hermes there have been fused to-
gether the attributes of two deities who were
90

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

originally distinct. The Hermes of the Ho-
meric Hymn is a wind-god ; but the later
Hermes Agoraios, the patron of gymnasia, the
mutilation of whose statues caused such terri-
ble excitement in Athens during the Pelopon-
nesian War, is a very different personage. He
is a fire-god, invested with many solar attributes,
and represents the quickening forces of nature.
In this capacity the invention of fire was as-
cribed to him as well as to Prometheus ; he was
said to be the friend of mankind, and was sur-
named Ploutodotes, or " the giver of wealth."
The Norse wind-god Odin has in like man-
ner acquired several of the attributes of Freyr
and Thor.1 His lightning spear, which is bor-
rowed from Thor, appears by a comical meta-
morphosis as a wish rod which will administer
a sound thrashing to the enemies of its posses-
sor. Having cut a hazel stick, you have only
to lay down an old coat, name your intended
victim, wish he was there, and whack away : he
will howl with pain at every blow. This won-
derful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale of " The
Lad who went to the North Wind," with which
we may conclude this discussion. The story is
told, with little variation, in Hindustan, Ger-
many, and Scandinavia.

1 In Polynesia, €f the great deity Maui adds a new com-
plication to his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing
as a wind-god." Tylor, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 242.

91

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

The North Wind, representing the mischiev-
ous Hermes, once blew away a poor woman's
meal. So her boy went to the North Wind and
demanded his rights for the meal his mother
had lost. " I have n't got your meal," said the
Wind, " but here 's a tablecloth which will cover
itself with an excellent dinner whenever you tell
it to." So the lad took the cloth and started for
home. At nightfall he stopped at an inn, spread
his cloth on the table, and ordered it to cover
itself with good things, and so it did. But the
landlord, who thought it would be money in
his pocket to have such a cloth, stole it after the
boy had gone to bed, and substituted another
just like it in appearance. Next day the boy
went home in great glee- to show off for his
mother's astonishment what the North Wind
had given him, but all the dinner he got that
day was what the old woman cooked for him.
In his despair he went back to the North Wind
and called him a liar, and again demanded his
rights for the meal he had lost. " I have n't got
your meal," said the Wind, " but here 's a ram
which will drop money out of its fleece when-
ever you tell it to." So the lad travelled home,
stopping over-night at the same inn, and when
he got home he found himself with a ram which
did n't drop coins out of its fleece. A third time
he visited the North Wind, and obtained a bag
with a stick in it which, at the word of command,
92

THE DESCENT OF FIRE

would jump out of the bag and lay on until told
to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to his
cloth and ram, he turned in at the same tavern,
and going to a bench lay down as if to sleep.
The landlord thought that a stick carried about
in a bag must be worth something, and so he
stole quietly up to the bag, meaning to get the
stick out and change it. But just as he got
within whacking distance, the boy gave the word,
and out jumped the stick and beat the thief
until he promised to give back the ram and the
tablecloth. And so the boy got his rights for
the meal which the North Wind had blown
away.

October, 1870

93

Ill

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-
MAIDENS

IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of
Arkadia, once invited Zeus to dinner, and
served up for him a dish of human flesh,
in order to test the god's omniscience. But
the trick miserably failed, and the impious mon-
arch received the punishment which his crime
had merited. He was transformed into a wolf,
that he might henceforth feed upon the viands
with which he had dared to pollute the table
of the king of Olympos. From that time forth,
according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was each
year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the
margin of a certain lake. Hanging his clothes
upon a tree, he then plunged into the water and
became a wolf. For the space of nine years he
roamed about the adjacent woods, and then, if
he had not tasted human flesh during all this
time, he was allowed to swim back to the place
where his clothes were hanging, put them on,
and return to his natural form. It is further
related of a certain Demainetos, that, having
once been present at a human sacrifice to Zeus
94

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was transformed
into a wolf for a term of ten years.1

These and other similar mythical germs were
developed by the mediaeval imagination into the
horrible superstition of werewolves.

A werewolf, or kup-getrou? was a person who
had the power of transforming himself into a
wolf, being endowed, while in the lupine state,
with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a
wolf, and the irresistible strength of a demon.
The ancients believed in the existence of such
persons ; but in the Middle Ages the meta-
morphosis was supposed to be a phenomenon
of daily occurrence, and even at the present day,
in secluded portions of Europe, the supersti-
tion is still cherished by peasants. The belief,
moreover, is supported by a vast amount of
evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-
poohed into insignificance. It is the business
of the comparative mythologist to trace the pedi-
gree of the ideas from which such a conception
may have sprung ; while to the critical historian
belongs the task of ascertaining and classifying
the actual facts which this particular conception
was used to interpret.

The mediaeval belief in werewolves is es-

1 Compare Plato, Republic, viii. 15.

2 Were-?volf= man-wolf, wer meaning " man." Garou
is a Gallic corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tau-
tological expression.

95

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

pecially adapted to illustrate the complicated
manner in which divers mythical conceptions
and misunderstood natural occurrences will com-
bine to generate a long-enduring superstition.
Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe that
the whole notion arose from an unintentional
play upon words ; but the careful survey of the
field, which has been taken by Hertz and Bar-
ing-Gould, leads to the conclusion that many
other circumstances have been at work. The
delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in
its origin, nevertheless presents in its developed
state a curious mixture of mythical and histor-
ical elements.

With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken
by itself, Mr. Cox is probably right. The story
seems to belong to that large class of myths
which have been devised in order to explain the
meaning of equivocal words whose true signifi-
cance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios,
as applied to Zeus, had originally no reference
to wolves : it means " the bright one," and gave
rise to lycanthropic legends only because of
the similarity in sound between the names for
"wolf" and " brightness." Aryan mythology
furnishes numerous other instances of this con-
fusion. The solar deity, Phoibos Lykegenes,
was originally the " offspring of light ; " but
popular etymology made a kind of werewolf
of him by interpreting his name as the " wolf-
96

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

born." The name of the hero Autolykos means
simply the " self-luminous ; " but it was more
frequently interpreted as meaning " a very wolf,"
in allusion to the supposed character of its pos-
sessor. Bazra, the name of the citadel of Car-
thage, was the Punic word for " fortress ; " but
the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, " a hide,"
and hence the story of the ox-hides cut into
strips by Dido in order to measure the area of
the place to be fortified. The old theory that
the Irish were Phoenicians had a similar origin.
The name Fena, used to designate the old Scoti
or Irish, is the plural of Fion, " fair," seen in
the name of the hero Fion Gall, or " Fin-
gal ; " but the monkish chroniclers identified
Fena with Phoinix, whence arose the myth ; and
by a like misunderstanding of the epithet Mi~
ledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by the Gaelic
bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Mi-
lesius, and the sobriquet " Milesian," colloqui-
ally employed in speaking of the Irish.1 So the
Franks explained the name of the town Daras,
in Mesopotamia, by the story that the Em-
peror Justinian once addressed the chief magis-
trate with the exclamation, daras, " thou shalt
give : " 2 the Greek chronicler, Malalas, who
spells the name Doras, informs us with equal

1 Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History,
vol. i. p. 151.

2 Aimoin, De Gestis Franc or urn, ii. 5.

97

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

complacency that it was the place where Alex-
ander overcame Codomannus with S6pvy " the
spear." A certain passage in the Alps is called
Scaletta, from its resemblance to a staircase ; but
according to a local tradition it owes its name
to the bleaching skeletons of a company of Moors
who were destroyed there in the eighth century,
while attempting to penetrate into Northern Italy.
The name of Antwerp denotes the town built
at a "wharf; " but it sounds very much like
the Flemish handt werpen, " hand-throwing : "
" hence arose the legend of the giant who cut
off the hands of those who passed his castle
without paying him blackmail, and threw them
into the Scheldt." 1 In the myth of Bishop
Hatto, related in a previous paper, the Mause-
thurm is a corruption of maut-thurm ; it means
" customs-tower," and has nothing to do with
mice or rats. Doubtless this etymology was the
cause of the floating myth getting fastened to
this particular place ; that it did not give rise to
the myth itself is shown by the existence of the
same tale in other places. Somewhere in Eng-
land there is a place called Chateau Vert ; the
peasantry have corrupted it into Shotover, and
say that it has borne that name ever since Little
John shot over a high hill in the neighbour-
hood.2 Latium means " the flat land ; " but,

1 Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.
a Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon
98

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

according to Virgil, it is the place where Saturn
once. hid (latuisset) from the wrath of his usurp-
ing son Jupiter.1

It was in this way that the constellation of
the Great Bear received its name. The Greek
word arktosy answering to the Sanskrit riksha,
meant originally any bright object, and was ap-
plied to the bear — for what reason it would
not be easy to state — and to that constella-
tion which was most conspicuous in the lati-
tude of the early home of the Aryans. When
the Greeks had long forgotten why these stars
were called arktoi, they symbolized them as a
Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as Max
Miiller observes, " the name of the Arctic re-
gions "Vests on a misunderstanding of a name
framed thousands of years ago in Central Asia,
and the surprise with which many a thoughtful

which is based the myth of the " confusion of tongues '* in
the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel** is
really Bab- 1 1, or " the gate of God ; '* but the Hebrew
writer erroneously derives the word from the root V22» balal,
"to confuse;" and hence arises the mythical explanation
that Babel was a place where human speech became confused.
See Rawlinson, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. i.
p. 149 ; Renan, Histoire des Langues Semitiques, vol. i. p. 32;
Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 74, note; Colenso on the Pen-
tateuch, vol. iv. p. 268.

1 Virg. &n, viii. 322. With Latium compare TrAcmk,
Skr. prath (to spread out), Eng. fiat. Ferrar, Comparative
Grammar of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, vol. i. p. 31.

99

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

observer has looked at these seven bright stars,
wondering why they were ever called the Bear,
is removed by a reference to the early annals of
human speech." Among the Algonquins the
sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, his
name being compounded of michiy " great," and
waboSy "a hare ; " yet wabos also meant "white,"
so that the god was doubtless originally called
simply " the Great White One." The same
naive process has made bears of the Arkadians,
whose name, like that of the Lykians, merely
signified that they were " children of light ; "
and the metamorphosis of Kallisto, mother of
Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf,
rests apparently upon no other foundation than
an erroneous etymology. Originally Lykaon
was neither man nor wolf; he was but another
form of Phoibos Lykegenes, the light-born
sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, his legend is
but a variation of that of Tantalos, who in time
of drought offers to Zeus the flesh of his own
offspring, the withered fruits, and is punished
for his impiety.

It seems to me, however, that this explana-
tion, though valid as far as it goes, is inadequate
to explain all the features of the werewolf su-
perstition, or to account for its presence in all
Aryan countries and among many peoples who
are not of Aryan origin. There can be no

100

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

doubt that the myth-makers transformed Ly-
kaon into a wolf because of his unlucky name ;
because what really meant " bright man "
seemed to them to mean " wolf-man ; " but it
has by no means been proved that a similar
equivocation occurred in the case of all the
primitive Aryan werewolves, nor has it been
shown to be probable that among each people
the being with the uncanny name got thus acci-
dentally confounded with the particular beast
most dreaded by that people. Etymology alone
does not explain the fact that while Gaul has
been the favourite haunt of the man-wolf,
Scandinavia has been preferred by the man-
bear, and Hindustan by the man-tiger. To ac-
count for such a widespread phenomenon we
must seek a more general cause.

Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of
primitive thinking than the close community
of nature which it assumes between man and
brute. The doctrine of metempsychosis, which
is found in some shape or other all over the
world, implies a fundamental identity between
the two ; the Hindu is taught to respect the
flocks browsing in the meadow, and will on no
account lift his hand against a cow, for who
knows but it may be his own grandmother ?
The recent researches of Mr. M'Lennan and
Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect

101

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

this feeling with the primeval worship of ances-
tors and with the savage customs of totemism.1
The worship of ancestors seems to have been
everywhere the oldest systematized form of
fetichistic religion. The reverence paid to the
chieftain of the tribe while living was contin-
ued and exaggerated after his death. The un-
civilized man is everywhere incapable of grasp-
ing the idea of death as it is apprehended by
civilized people. He cannot understand that a
man should pass away so as to be no longer
capable of communicating with his fellows. The
image of his dead chief or comrade remains in
his mind, and the savage's philosophic realism
far surpasses that of the most extravagant me-
diaeval schoolmen ; to him the persistence of
the idea implies the persistence of the reality.
The dead man, accordingly, is not really dead ;
he has thrown off his body like a husk, yet still
retains his old appearance, and often shows
himself to his old friends, especially after night-
fall. He is no doubt possessed of more exten-
sive powers than before his transformation,2 and

1 M'Lennan, " The Worship of Animals and Plants,"
Fortnightly Review, N. s. vol. vi. pp. 407-427, 562-582,
vol. vii. pp. 194-216 ; Spencer, The Origin of dnimal Wor-
ship, id. vol. vii. pp. 535-550, reprinted in his Recent
Discussions in Science, etc., pp. 31—56.

8 Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu,
who slays himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire
greater power of injuring him. " A certain Brahman, on
102

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

may very likely have a share in regulating the
weather, granting or withholding rain. There-
fore, argues the uncivilized mind, he is to be
cajoled and propitiated more sedulously now
than before his strange transformation.

This kind of worship still maintains a lan-
guid existence as the state religion of China, and
it still exists as a portion of Brahmanism ; but
in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in all its
vigour and in all its naive simplicity. Accord-
ing to the ancient Aryan, the Pitrisy or " Fa-
thers " (Lat. patres), live in the sky along with
Yama, the great original Pitri of mankind.
This first man came down from heaven in the
lightning, and back to heaven both himself and
all his offspring must have gone. There they
distribute light unto men below, and they shine
themselves as stars ; and hence the Christian-

whose lands a Kshatriya raja had built a house, ripped him-
self up in revenge, and became a demon of the kind called
Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the whole
country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur.
Toward the close of the last century there were two Brahmans,
out of whose house a man had wrongfully, as they thought,
taken forty rupees ; whereupon one of the Brahmans pro-
ceeded to cut off his own mother's head, with the professed
view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit,
excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days,
might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their
money and those concerned with him." Tylor, Primitivl
Culture, vol. ii. p. 103.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ized German peasant, fifty centuries later, tells
his children that the stars are angels' eyes, and
the English cottager impresses it on the youth-
ful mind that it is wicked to point at the stars,
though why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are
not stars only, nor do they content themselves
with idly looking down on the affairs of men,
after the fashion of the laissez-faire divinities
of Lucretius. They are, on the contrary, very
busy with the weather ; they send rain, thun-
der, and lightning ; and they especially delight
in rushing over the housetops in a great gale
of wind, led on by their chief, the mysterious
huntsman, Hermes or Odin.

It has been elsewhere shown that the howl-
ing dog, or wish-hound of Hermes, whose ap-
pearance under the windows of a sick person
is such an alarming portent, is merely the tem-
pest personified. Throughout all Aryan my-
thology the souls of the dead are supposed to
ride on the night-wind, with their howling dogs,
gathering into their throng the souls of those
just dying as they pass by their houses.1 Some-
times the whole complex conception is wrapped
up in the notion of a single dog, the messen-
ger of the god of shades, who comes to sum-
mon the departing soul. Sometimes, instead of

1 Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to
open the windows when a person dies, in order that the soul
may not be hindered in joining the mystic cavalcade.
104

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

a dog, we have a great ravening wolf who comes
to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight
of life, as that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir
devoured little Red Riding-Hood with her robe
of scarlet twilight.1 Thus we arrive at a true
werewolf myth. The storm-wind, or howling
Rakshasa of Hindu folk-lore, is "a great mis-
shapen giant with red beard and red hair, with
pointed protruding teeth, ready to lacerate and
devour human flesh ; his body is covered with
coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open,
he looks from side to side as he walks, lusting
after the flesh and blood of men, to satisfy his
raging hunger and quench his consuming thirst.

1 The story of little Red Riding- Hood is " mutilated in
the English version, but known more perfectly by old wives
in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her
shining red satin cloak was swallowed with her grandmother
by the wolf, till they both came out safe and sound when the
hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor, Primitive
Culture, i. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of
Vasilissa the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb,
who " was swallowed by a cow and came out unhurt;"
the story of Saktideva swallowed by the fish and cut out
again, in Somadeva Bhatta, ii. 118—184; anc^ tne story
of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament.
All these are different versions of the same myth, and refer to
the alternate swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night,
which is commonly personified as a wolf, and now and then
as a great fish. Compare Grimm's story of the Wolf and
Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit., and see Early History of Man-
kind, p. 337 ; Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 501.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Toward nightfall his strength increases mani-
fold ; he can change his shape at will ; he haunts
the woods, and roams howling through the
jungle."1

Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or
one great Pitri who appears as a fearful giant,
and is also a pack of wolves or wish-hounds,
or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is
obvious to the mythopoeic mind that men may
become wolves, at least after death. And to
the uncivilized thinker this inference is strength-
ened, as Mr. Spencer has shown, by evidence
registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic
emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of
heraldry are the degenerate descendants of the
totem of savagery which designated the tribe by
a beast symbol. To the untutored mind there
is everything in a name ; and the descendant
of Brown Bear or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hy-
aena cannot be pronounced unfaithful to his own
style of philosophizing, if he regards his ances-
tors, who career about his hut in the darkness
of night, as belonging to whatever order of
beasts his totem associations may suggest.

Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown
on the subject of metempsychosis, but we get
a glimpse of the curious process by which the
intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at

1 Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178 ; Muir,
Sanskrit Texts, ii. 435.

106

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

the notion that men could be transformed into
beasts. For the belief that the soul can tem-
porarily quit the body during lifetime has been
universally entertained ; and from the concep-
tion of wolf-like ghosts it was but a short step
to the conception of corporeal werewolves. In
the Middle Ages the phenomena of trance and
catalepsy were cited in proof of the theory that
the soul can leave the body and afterward return
to it. Hence it was very difficult for a person
accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi; for to
any amount of evidence showing that the body
was innocently reposing at home and in bed, the
rejoinder was obvious that the soul may never-
theless have been in attendance at the witches'
sabbath or busied in maiming a neighbour's
cattle. According to one mediaeval notion, the
soul of the werewolf quit its human body, which
remained in a trance until its return.1

The mythological basis of the werewolf su-
perstition is now, I believe, sufficiently indicated.
The belief, however, did not reach its complete
development, or acquire its most horrible fea-
tures, until the pagan habits of thought which
had originated it were modified by contact with
Christian theology. To the ancient there was
nothing necessarily diabolical in the transforma-
tion of a man into a beast. But Christianity,

1 In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have
been thought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, i. xxi.
107

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

which retained such a host of pagan concep-
tions under such strange disguises, which de-
graded the " All-father " Odin into the ogre of
the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-
stalk, and which blended the beneficent light-
ning-god Thor and the mischievous Hermes
and the faun-like Pan into the grotesque Teu-
tonic Devil, did not fail to impart a new and
fearful character to the belief in werewolves.
Lycanthropy became regarded as a species of
witchcraft ; the werewolf was supposed to have
obtained his peculiar powers through the favour
or connivance of the Devil ; and hundreds of
persons were burned alive or broken on the
wheel for having availed themselves of the priv-
ilege of beast metamorphosis. The superstition,
thus widely extended and greatly intensified, was
confirmed by many singular phenomena which
cannot be omitted from any thorough discussion
of the nature and causes of lycanthropy.

The first of these phenomena is the Berserker
insanity, characteristic of Scandinavia, but not
unknown in other countries. In times when kill-
ing one's enemies often formed a part of the ne-
cessary business of life, persons were frequently
found who killed for the mere love of the
thing ; with whom slaughter was an end desir-
able in itself, not merely a means to a desirable
end. What the miser is in an age which worships
mammon, such was the Berserker in an age
108

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

when the current idea of heaven was that of a
place where people could hack each other to
pieces through all eternity, and when the man
who refused a challenge was punished with con-
fiscation of his estates. With these Northmen,
in the ninth century, the chief business and
amusement in life was to set sail for some
pleasant country, like Spain or France, and
make all the coasts and navigable rivers hide-
ous with rapine and massacre. When at home,
in the intervals between their freebooting expe-
ditions, they were liable to become possessed by
a strange homicidal madness, during which they
would array themselves in the skins of wolves
or bears, and sally forth by night to crack the
backbones, smash the skulls, and sometimes to
drink with fiendish glee the blood of unwary
travellers or loiterers. These fits of madness
were usually followed by periods of utter ex-
haustion and nervous depression.1

Such, according to the unanimous testimony
of historians, was the celebrated " Berserker
rage," not peculiar to the Northland, although
there most conspicuously manifested. Taking

1 See Dasent, Burnt Njal, vol. i. p. xxii. ; Grettis Saga,
by Magnusson and Morris, chap. xix. ; Viga Glum's Saga,
by Sir Edmund Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers
are said to have maddened themselves with drugs. Dasent
compares them with the Malays, who work themselves into
a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run amuck.
109

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

now a step in advance, we find that in com-
paratively civilized countries there have been
many cases of monstrous homicidal insanity.
The two most celebrated cases, among those
collected by Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of
the Marechal de Retz, in 1440, and of Eliza-
beth, a Hungarian countess, in the seventeenth
century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed young
girls into her palace on divers pretexts, and then
coolly murdered them, for the purpose of bath-
ing in their blood. The spectacle of human
suffering became at last such a delight to her
that she would apply with her own hands the
most excruciating tortures, relishing the shrieks
of her victims as the epicure relishes each sip
of his old Chateau Margaux. In this way she
is said to have murdered six hundred and fifty
persons before her evil career was brought to
an end ; though, when one recollects the fa-
mous men in buckram and the notorious trio
of crows, one is inclined to strike off a cipher,
and regard sixty-five as a sufficiently imposing
and far less improbable number. But the case
of the Marechal de Retz is still more frightful.
A marshal of France, a scholarly man, a patriot,
and a man of holy life, he became suddenly
possessed by an uncontrollable desire to murder
children. During seven years he continued to
inveigle little boys and girls into his castle, at
the rate of about two each week^ (?) and then
no

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

put them to death in various ways, that he
might witness their agonies and bathe in their
blood ; experiencing after each occasion the
most dreadful remorse, but led on by an irre-
sistible craving to repeat the crime. When this
unparalleled iniquity was finally brought to
light, the castle was found to contain bins full
of children's bones. The horrible details of the
trial are to be found in the histories of France
by Michelet and Martin.

Going a step further, we find cases in which
the propensity to murder has been accompanied
by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor of Chalons
was sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be
burned alive for lycanthropy. " This wretched
man had decoyed children into his shop, or at-
tacked them in the gloaming when they strayed
in the woods, had torn them with his teeth and
killed them, after which he seems calmly to have
dressed their flesh as ordinary meat, and to
have eaten it with a great relish. The number
of little innocents whom he destroyed is un-
known. A whole caskful of bones was discov-
ered in his house."1 About 1850 a beggar in
the village of Polomyia, in Galicia, was proved
to have killed and eaten fourteen children. A
house had one day caught fire and burnt to the
ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was
unable to escape. The beggar passed by soon
1 Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.
Ill

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

after, and, as he was suffering from excessive
hunger, could not resist the temptation of mak-
ing a meal off the charred body. From that
moment he was tormented by a craving for
human flesh. He met a little orphan girl, about
nine years old, and giving her a pinchbeck ring
told her to seek for others like it under a tree
in the neighbouring wood. She was slain, car-
ried to the beggar's hovel, and eaten. In the
course of three years thirteen other children
mysteriously disappeared, but no one knew
whom to suspect. At last an innkeeper missed
a pair of ducks, and having no good opinion of
this beggar's honesty, went unexpectedly to his
cabin, burst suddenly in at the door, and to his
horror found him in the act of hiding under
his cloak a severed head ; a bowl of fresh blood
stood under the oven, and pieces of a thigh
were cooking over the fire.1

This occurred only about twenty years ago,
and the criminal, though ruled by an insane ap-
petite, is not known to have been subject to any
mental delusion. But there have been a great
many similar cases, in which the homicidal or
cannibal craving has been accompanied by gen-
uine hallucination. Forms of insanity in which
the afflicted persons imagine themselves to be
brute animals are not perhaps very common,
but they are not unknown. I once knew a poor
1 Baring-Gould, op. fit. chap. xiv.
112

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

demented old man who believed himself to be
a horse, and would stand by the hour together
before a manger, nibbling hay, or deluding him-
self with the pretence of so doing. Many of
the cannibals whose cases are related by Mr.
Baring-Gould, in his chapter of horrors, actually
believed themselves to have been transformed
into wolves or other wild animals. Jean Gre-
nier was a boy of thirteen, partially idiotic, and
of strongly marked canine physiognomy ; his
jaws were large and projected forward, and his
canine teeth were unnaturally long, so as to
protrude beyond the lower lip. He believed
himself to be a werewolf. One evening, meet-
ing half a dozen young girls, he scared them
out of their wits by telling them that as soon as
the sun had set he would turn into a wolf and
eat them for supper. A few days later, one
little girl, having gone out at nightfall to look
after the sheep, was attacked by some creature
which in her terror she mistook for a wolf, but
which afterward proved to be none other than
Jean Grenier. She beat him off with her sheep-
staff, and fled home. As several children had
mysteriously disappeared from the neighbour-
hood, Grenier was at once suspected. Being
brought before the parliament of Bordeaux, he
stated that two years ago he had met the Devil
one night in the woods and had signed a com-
pact with him and received from him a wolfskin.
"3

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Since then he had roamed about as a wolf after
dark, resuming his human shape by daylight.
He had killed and eaten several children whom
he had found alone in the fields, and on one
occasion he had entered a house while the fam-
ily were out and taken the baby from its cra-
dle. A careful investigation proved the truth
of these statements, so far as the cannibalism
was concerned. There is no doubt that the miss-
ing children were eaten by Jean Grenier, and
there is no doubt that in his own mind the half-
witted boy was firmly convinced that he was
a wolf. Here the lycanthropy was complete.

In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfre-
quented spot near Caude, some countrymen
came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fif-
teen, horribly mutilated and bespattered with
blood. As the men approached, two wolves,
which had been rending the body, bounded
away into the thicket. The men gave chase im-
mediately, following their bloody tracks till they
lost them ; when, suddenly crouching among
the bushes, his teeth chattering with fear, they
found a man half naked, with long hair and
beard, and with his hands dyed in blood. His
nails were long as claws, and were clotted with
fresh gore and shreds of human flesh." 1

This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-
witted creature under the dominion of a can-
1 Baring-Gould, op. fit. p. 82.
114

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

nibal appetite. He was employed in tearing to
pieces the corpse of the boy when these country-
men came up. Whether there were any wolves
in the case, except what the excited imaginations
of the men may have conjured up, I will not
presume to determine ; but it is certain that
Roulet supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed
and ate several persons under the influence of
the delusion. He was sentenced to death, but
the parliament of Paris reversed the sentence,
and charitably shut him up in a madhouse.

The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many
cases similar to these of Grenier and Roulet.
Their share in maintaining the werewolf super-
stition is undeniable ; but modern science finds
in them nothing that cannot be readily ex-
plained. That stupendous process of breeding,
which we call civilization, has been for long
ages strengthening those kindly social feelings
by the possession of which we are chiefly dis-
tinguished from the brutes, leaving our primi-
tive bestial impulses to die for want of exercise,
or checking in every possible way their further
expansion by legislative enactments. But this
process, which is transforming us from savages
into civilized men, is a very slow one ; and now
and then there occur cases of what physiologists
call atavism, or reversion to an ancestral type
of character. Now and then persons are born,
in civilized countries, whose intellectual powers
"5

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

are on a level with those of the most degraded
Australian savage, and these we call idiots. And
now and then persons are born possessed of the
bestial appetites and cravings of primitive man,
his fiendish cruelty and his liking for human
flesh. Modern physiology knows how to clas-
sify and explain these abnormal cases, but to
the unscientific mediasval mind they were ex-
plicable only on the hypothesis of a diabolical
metamorphosis. And there is nothing strange
in the fact that, in an age when the prevailing
habits of thought rendered the transformation
of men into beasts an easily admissible notion,
these monsters of cruelty and depraved appetite
should have been regarded as capable of tak-
ing on bestial forms. Nor is it strange that the
hallucination under which these unfortunate
wretches laboured should have taken such a
shape as to account to their feeble intelligence
for the existence of the appetites which they
were conscious of not sharing with their neigh-
bours and contemporaries. If a myth is a piece
of unscientific philosophizing, it must some-
times be applied to the explanation of obscure
psychological as well as of physical phenomena.
Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and
says, " Arrested development," the terrified an-
cient made the sign of the cross and cried,
" Werewolf."

116

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

We shall be assisted in this explanation by
turning aside for a moment to examine the
wild superstitions about "changelings," which
contributed, along with so many others, to make
the lives of our ancestors anxious and miserable.
These superstitions were for the most part at-
tempts to explain the phenomena of insanity,
epilepsy, and other obscure nervous diseases.
A man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health,
and whose actions have been consistent and
rational, suddenly loses all self-control and
seems actuated by a will foreign to himself.
Modern science possesses the key to this phe-
nomenon ; but in former times it was explicable
only on the hypothesis that a demon had en-
tered the body of the lunatic, or else that the
fairies had stolen the real man and substituted
for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him
in stature and features. Hence the numerous
legends of changelings, some of which are very
curious. In Irish folk-lore we find the story of
one Rickard, surnamed the Rake, from his
worthless character. A good-natured, idle fel-
low, he spent all his evenings in dancing, — an
accomplishment in which no one in the village
could rival him. One night, in the midst of a
lively reel, he fell down in a fit. " He 's struck
with a fairy dart," exclaimed all the friends, and
they carried him home and nursed him ; but

117

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

his face grew so thin and his manner so morose
that by and by all began to suspect that the
true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in
his place. Rickard, with all his accomplish-
ments, was no musician ; and so, in order to put
the matter to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left
in the room by the side of his bed. The trick
succeeded. One hot summer's day, when all
were supposed to be in the field making hay,
some members of the family secreted in a clothes-
press saw the bedroom door open a little way,
and a lean, foxy face, with a pair of deep-sunken
eyes, peer anxiously about the premises. Hav-
ing satisfied itself that the coast was clear, the
face withdrew, the door was closed, and pre-
sently such ravishing strains of music were heard
as never proceeded from a bagpipe before or
since that day. Soon was heard the rustle of in-
numerable fairies, come to dance to the change-
ling's music. Then the " fairy-man " of the vil-
lage, who was keeping watch with the family,
heated a pair of tongs red-hot, and with deafen-
ing shouts all burst at once into the sick cham-
ber. The music had ceased and the room was
empty, but in at the window glared a fiendish
face, with such fearful looks of hatred, that for
a moment all stood motionless with terror. But
when the fairy-man, recovering himself, ad-
vanced with the hot tongs to pinch its nose, it
vanished with an unearthly yell, and there on
118

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

the bed was Rickard, safe and sound, and cured
of his epilepsy.1

Comparing this legend with numerous others
relating to changelings, and stripping off the
fantastic garb of fairy-lore with which popular
imagination has invested them, it seems impos-
sible to doubt that they have arisen from myths
devised for the purpose of explaining the ob-
scure phenomena of mental disease. If this be
so, they afford an excellent collateral illustra-
tion of the belief in werewolves. The same
mental habits which led men to regard the
insane or epileptic person as a changeling, and
which allowed them to explain catalepsy as the
temporary departure of a witch's soul from its
body, would enable them to attribute a wolf's
nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibal ap-
petites. And when the myth-forming process
had got thus far, it would not stop short of
assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible
lupine body; for all ancient mythology teemed
with precedents for such a transformation.

It remains for us to sum up, — to tie into a
bunch the keys which have helped us to pene-
trate into the secret causes of the werewolf
superstition. In a previous paper we saw what
a host of myths, fairy-tales, and superstitious
observances have sprung from attempts to inter-
pret one simple natural phenomenon, — the

1 Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.
119

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

descent of fire from the clouds. Here, on the
other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multi-
tude of mythical elements may combine to build
up in course of time a single enormous supersti-
tion, and we see how curiously fact and fancy
have cooperated in keeping the superstition from
falling. In the first place the worship of dead
ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion
of the transformation of men into divine or
superhuman wolves ; and this notion was con-
firmed by the ambiguous explanation of the
storm-wind as the rushing of a troop of dead
men's souls or as the howling of wolf-like
monsters. Mediaeval Christianity retained these
conceptions, merely changing the superhuman
wolves into evil demons ; and finally the occur-
rence of cases of Berserker madness and canni-
balism, accompanied by lycanthropic hallucina-
tions, being interpreted as due to such demo-
niacal metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf
superstition of the Middle Ages. The etymo-
logical proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would
incontinently ascribe the origin of the entire
superstition, seemed to me to have played a
very subordinate part in the matter. To suppose
that Jean Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf,
because the Greek word for wolf sounded like
the word for light, and thus gave rise to the
story of a light deity who became a wolf, seems
to me quite inadmissible. Yet as far as such
120

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they
doubtless helped to sustain the delusion.

Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf
as an inexplicable creature of undetermined
pedigree. But any account of him would be
quite imperfect which should omit all consider-
ation of the methods by which his change of
form was accomplished. By the ancient Ro-
mans the werewolf was commonly called a "skin-
changer " or " turn-coat " (versipellis), and sim-
ilar epithets were applied to him in the Middle
Ages. The mediaeval theory was that, while the
werewolf kept his human form, his hair grew
inwards; when he wished to become a wolf,
he simply turned himself inside out. In many
trials on record, the prisoners were closely in-
terrogated as to how this inversion might be
accomplished ; but I am not aware that any one
of them ever gave a satisfactory answer. At the
moment of change their memories seem to have
become temporarily befogged. Now and then
a poor wretch had his arms and legs cut off, or
was partially flayed, in order that the ingrowing
hair might be detected.1 Another theory was,

1 " En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se
croyait change en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et met-
tant a mort ceux qu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes,
on parvint s'emparer de lui. II dit en confidence a ceux
qui 1'arreterent : Je suis vraiment un loup, et si ma peau ne
parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parce qu'elle est retour-
121

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

that the possessed person had merely to put on
a wolf's skin, in order to assume instantly the
lupine form and character ; and in this may per-
haps be seen a vague reminiscence of the alleged
fact that Berserkers were in the habit of haunt-
ing the woods by night, clothed in the hides
of wolves or bears.1 Such a wolfskin was kept
by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other hand,
confessed to using a magic salve or ointment.
A fourth method of becoming a werewolf was
to obtain a girdle, usually made of human skin.
Several cases are related in Thorpe's " North-
ern Mythology." One hot day in harvest-time

nee et que les poils sont en dedans. — Pour s' assurer du fait,
on coupa le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on
lui emporta les bras et les jambes." Taine, De I* Intelli-
gence, torn. ii. p. 203. See the account of Slavonic were-
wolves in Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 404-
418.

1 Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history
rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a
sneer the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that
«« the unanimous testimony of the Norse historians is worth as
much and as little as the convictions of Glanvil and Hale on
the reality of witchcraft." I have not the special knowledge
requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this point, but Mr.
Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not
such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion,
unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the
bearsarks may, no doubt, be the same thing as the frenzy
of Herakles ; but something more than mere dogmatism is
needed to prove it.

122

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

some reapers lay down to sleep in the shade ;
when one of them, who could not sleep, saw
the man next him arise quietly and gird him
with a strap, whereupon he instantly vanished,
and a wolf jumped up from among the sleepers
and ran off across the fields. Another man, who
possessed such a girdle, once went away from
home without remembering to lock it up. His
little son climbed up to the cupboard and got
it, and as he proceeded to buckle it around his
waist he became instantly transformed into a
strange-looking beast, just then his father
came in, and seizing the girdle restored the
child to his natural shape. The boy said that
no sooner had he buckled it on than he was
tormented with a raging hunger.

Sometimes the werewolf transformation led
to unlucky accidents. At Caseburg, as a man
and his wife were making hay, the woman threw
down her pitchfork and went away, telling her
husband that if a wild beast should come to
him during her absence he must throw his hat
at it. Presently a she-wolf rushed toward him.
The man threw his hat at it, but a boy came up
from another part of the field and stabbed the
animal with his pitchfork, whereupon it van-
ished, and the woman's dead body lay at his feet.

A parallel legend shows that this woman
wished to have the hat thrown at her, in order
that she might be henceforth free from her Ha-
123

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

bility to become a werewolf. A man was one
night returning with his wife from a merry-
making when he felt the change coming on.
Giving his wife the reins, he jumped from the
wagon, telling her to strike with her apron at
any animal which might come to her. In a few
moments a wolf ran up to the side of the ve-
hicle, and, as the woman struck out with her
apron, it bit off a piece and ran away. Pre-
sently the man returned with the piece of apron
in his mouth, and consoled his terrified wife
with the information that the enchantment had
left him forever.

A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has
found its way into the annals of witchcraft. " A
gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked
by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impene-
trable by his shot, the beast made a spring upon
the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle
luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady,
contrived to cut off one of its fore-paws. This
trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the
best of his way homewards in safety. On the
road he met a friend, to whom he exhibited a
bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared) a
woman's hand, upon which was a wedding-ring.
His wife's ring was at once recognized by the
other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately
went in search of his wife, who was found sit-
ting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden
124

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

beneath her apron, when the husband, seizing
her by the arm, found his terrible suspicions
verified. The bleeding stump was there, evi-
dently just fresh from the wound. She was
given into custody, and in the event was burned
at Riom, in presence of thousands of spec-
tators." 1

Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by
recognizing him while in his brute shape. A
Swedish legend tells of a cottager who, on en-
tering the forest one day without recollecting
to say his Pater Noster, got into the power of
a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For
many years his wife mourned him as dead. But
one Christmas eve the old Troll, disguised as
a beggar-woman, came to the house for alms ;
and being taken in and kindly treated, told the
woman that her husband might very likely ap-
pear to her in wolf shape. Going at night to
the pantry to lay aside a joint of meat for to-
morrow's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with
its paws on the window-sill, looking wistfully

1 Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See a
parallel case of a cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mytho-
logy, ii. 26. "Certain witches at Thurso for a long rime
tormented an honest fellow under the usual form of cats, till
one night he put them to flight with his broadsword, and cut
off the leg of one less nimble than the rest ; taking it up, to
his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and next
morning he discovered the old hag its owner with but one leg
left." Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 283.
125

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

in at her. " Ah, dearest," said she, " if I knew
that thou wert really my husband, I would give
thee a bone." Whereupon the wolfskin fell
off, and her husband stood before her in the
same old clothes which he had on the day that
the Troll got hold of him.

In Denmark it was believed that if a woman
were to creep through a colt's placental mem-
brane stretched between four sticks, she would
for the rest of her life bring forth children with-
out pain or illness ; but all the boys would in
such cases be werewolves, and all the girls
Maras, or nightmares. In this grotesque super-
stition appears that curious kinship between
the werewolf and the wife or maiden of super-
natural race, which serves admirably to illus-
trate the nature of both conceptions, and the
elucidation of which shall occupy us through-
out the remainder of this paper.

It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the
personality of the nightmare, or Mara, there
was nothing equine. The Mara was a female
demon,1 who would come at night and torment
men or women by crouching on their chests or
stomachs and stopping their respiration. The
scene is well enough represented in Fuseli's
picture, though the frenzied-looking horse which

1 " The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph;
compare Anglo-Saxon wudumare (wood-mare) =: echo."
Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 173.
126

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

there accompanies the demon has no place in
the original superstition. A Netherlandish story
illustrates the character of the Mara. Two
young men were in love with the same damsel.
One of them, being tormented every night by
a Mara, sought advice from his rival, and it was
a treacherous counsel that he got. " Hold a
sharp knife with a point towards your breast,
and you '11 never see the Mara again," said this
false friend. The lad thanked him, but when
he lay down to rest he thought it as well to be
on the safe side, and so held the knife han-
dle downward. So when the Mara came, in-
stead of forcing the blade into his breast, she
cut herself badly, and fled howling ; and let us
hope, though the legend here leaves us in the
dark, that this poor youth, who is said to have
been the comelier of the two, revenged himself
on his malicious rival by marrying the young
lady.

But the Mara sometimes appeared in less
revolting shape, and became the mistress or
even the wife of some mortal man to whom she
happened to take a fancy. In such cases she
would vanish on being recognized. There is a
well-told monkish tale of a pious knight who,
journeying one day through the forest, found
a beautiful lady stripped naked and tied to a
tree, her back all covered with deep gashes,
streaming with blood, from a flogging which
127

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

some bandits had given her. Of course he took
her home to his castle and married her, and for
a while they lived very happily together, and
the fame of the lady's beauty was so great that
kings and emperors held tournaments in honour
of her. But this pious knight used to go to
mass every Sunday, and greatly was he scandal-
ized when he found that his wife would never
stay to assist in the Credo, but would always get
up and walk out of chur.chjust as the choir struck
up. All her husband's coaxing was of no use ;
threats and entreaties were alike powerless even to
elicit an explanation of this strange conduct. At
last the good man determined to use force ; and
so one Sunday, as the lady got up to go out,
according to custom, he seized her by the arm
and sternly commanded her to remain. Her
whole frame was suddenly convulsed, and her
dark eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly bril-
liancy. The services paused for a moment, and
all eyes were turned toward the knight and his
lady. "In God's name, tell me what thouart,"
shouted the knight ; and instantly, says the
chronicler, " the bodily form of the lady melted
away, and was seen no more ; whilst, with a
cry of anguish and of terror, an evil spirit of
monstrous form rose from the ground, clave
the chapel roof asunder, and disappeared in the
air."

In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her
128

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

affinity to the Nixies, or Swan-maidens. A
peasant discovered that his sweetheart was in
the habit of coming to him by night as a Mara.
He kept strict watch until he discovered her
creeping into the room through a small knot-
hole in the door. Next day he made a peg, and
after she had come to him drove in the peg so
that she was unable to escape. They were mar-
ried and lived together many years ; but one
night it happened that the man, joking with his
wife about the way in which he had secured
her, drew the peg from the knot-hole, that she
might see how she had entered his room. As
she peeped through, she became suddenly quite
small, passed out, and was never seen again.

The well-known pathological phenomena of
nightmare are sufficient to account for the me-
diaeval theory of a fiend who sits upon one's
bosom and hinders respiration ; but as we com-
pare these various legends relating to the Mara,
we see that a more recondite explanation is
needed to account for all her peculiarities. In-
digestion may interfere with our breathing, but
it does not make beautiful women crawl through
keyholes, nor does it bring wives from the
spirit world. The Mara belongs to an ancient
family, and in passing from the regions of
monkish superstition to those of pure mytho-
logy we find that, like her kinsman the were-
wolf, she had once seen better days. Chris tian-
129

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ity made a demon of the Mara, and adopted the
theory that Satan employed these seductive
creatures as agents for ruining human souls.
Such is the character of the knight's wife, in the
monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish
tale the Mara appears as one of that large fam-
ily of supernatural wives who are permitted to
live with mortal men under certain conditions,
but who are compelled to flee away when these
conditions are broken, as is always sure to be
the case. The eldest and one of the loveliest
of this family is the Hindu nymph Urvasi,
whose love adventures with Pururavas are nar-
rated in the Puranas, and form the subject of
the well-known and exquisite Sanskrit drama
by Kalidasa. Urvasi is allowed to live with
Pururavas so long as she does not see him,
undressed. But one night her kinsmen, the
Gandharvas, or cloud-demons, vexed at her long
absence from heaven, resolved to get her away
from her mortal companion. They stole a pet
lamb which had been tied at the foot of her
couch, whereat she bitterly upbraided her hus-
band. In rage and mortification, Pururavas
sprang up without throwing on his tunic, and
grasping his sword sought the robber. Then
the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning,
and Urvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly
vanished.

The different versions of this legend, which
130

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

have been elaborately analyzed by comparative
mythologists, leave no doubt that Urvasi is
one of the dawn-nymphs or bright fleecy clouds
of early morning, which vanish as the splendour
of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the preced-
ing paper, that the ancient Aryans regarded the
sky as a sea or great lake, and that the clouds
were explained variously as Phaiakian ships
with birdlike beaks sailing over this lake, or
as bright birds of divers shapes and hues. The
light fleecy cirrhi were regarded as mermaids,
or as swans, or as maidens with swan's plu-
mage. In Sanskrit they are called Apsaras, or
"those who move in the water," and the Elves
and Maras of Teutonic mythology have the
same significance. Urvasi appears in one le-
gend as a bird ; and a South German prescrip-
tion for getting rid of the Mara asserts that if
she be wrapped up in the bedclothes and firmly
held, a white dove will forthwith fly from the
room, leaving the bedclothes empty.1

In the story of Melusina the cloud-maiden
appears as a kind of mermaid, but in other
respects the legend resembles that of Urvasi.
Raymond, Count de la Foret, of Poitou, having
by an accident killed his patron and benefactor
during a hunting excursion, fled in terror and

1 See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Fetters, p. 91 ; Weber,
In disc he Studien, i. 197; Wolf, Eeitr age zur deutschen
ie, ii. 233-281 ; Miiller, Chips, ii. 114-128.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

despair into the deep recesses of the forest. All
the afternoon and evening he wandered through
the thick dark woods, until at midnight he
came upon a strange scene. All at once " the
boughs of the trees became less interlaced, and
the trunks fewer; next moment his horse,
crashing through the shrubs, brought him out
on a pleasant glade, white with rime, and illu-
mined by the new moon ; in the midst bubbled
up a limpid fountain, and flowed away over a
pebbly floor with a soothing murmur. Near
the fountain-head sat three maidens in glimmer-
ing white dresses, with long waving golden hair,
and faces of inexpressible beauty." l One of
them advanced to meet Raymond, and accord-
ing to all mythological precedent, they were
betrothed before daybreak. In due time the
fountain-nymph 2 became Countess de la Foret,
but her husband was given to understand that
all her Saturdays would be passed in strictest
seclusion, upon which he must never dare to
intrude, under penalty of losing her forever.
For many years all went well, save that the
fair Melusina's children were, without excep-
tion, misshapen or disfigured. But after a while
this strange weekly seclusion got bruited about

1 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, ii. 207.

a The word nymph itself means " cloud-maiden," as is
illustrated by the kinship between the Greek vv^rj and the
Latin nubes.

. 132

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

all over the neighbourhood, and people shook
their heads and looked grave about it. So many
gossiping tales came to the Count's ears, that
he began to grow anxious and suspicious, and
at last he determined to know the worst. He
went one Saturday to Melusina's private apart-
ments, and going through one empty room after
another, at last came to a locked door which
opened into a bath ; looking through a key-
hole, there he saw the Countess transformed
from the waist downwards into a fish, disport-
ing herself like a mermaid in the water. Of
course he could not keep the secret, but when
some time afterward they quarrelled, must needs
address her as "a vile serpent, contaminator
of his honourable race." So she disappeared
through the window, but ever afterward hovered
about her husband's castle of Lusignan, like a
Banshee, whenever one of its lords was about
to die.

The well-known story of Undine is similar
to that of Melusina, save that the naiad's desire
to obtain a human soul is a conception foreign
to the spirit of the myth, and marks the de-
gradation which Christianity had inflicted upon
the denizens of fairyland. In one of Dasent's
tales the water-maiden is replaced by a kind of
werewolf. A white bear marries a young girl,
but assumes the human shape at night. She is
never to look upon him in his human shape,
'33

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

but how could a young bride be expected to
obey such an injunction as that ? She lights a
candle while he is sleeping, and discovers the
handsomest prince in the world ; unluckily she
drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the
story. But she is more fortunate than poor
Raymond, for after a tiresome journey to the
" land east of the sun and west of the moon,"
and an arduous washing-match with a parcel of
ugly Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends
her husband's enchantment.1

In the majority of these legends, however,
the Apsaras, or cloud-maiden, has a shirt of
swan's feathers which plays the same part as the
wolfskin cape or girdle of the werewolf. If you
could get hold of a werewolf's sack and burn
it, a permanent cure was effected. No danger of
a relapse, unless the Devil furnished him with
a new wolfskin. So the swan-maiden kept her
human form, as long as she was deprived of
her tunic of feathers. Indo-European folk-lore
teems with stories of swan-maidens forcibly
wooed and won by mortals who had stolen their
clothes. A man travelling along the road passes
by a lake where several lovely girls are bathing ;
their dresses, made of feathers curiously and
daintily woven, lie on the shore. He approaches
the place cautiously and steals one of these

1 This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty
and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

dresses.1 When the girls have finished their
bathing, they all come and get their dresses and
swim away as swans ; but the one whose dress
is stolen must needs stay on shore and marry
the thief. It is needless to add that they live
happily together for many years, or that finally
the good man accidentally leaves the cupboard
door unlocked, whereupon his wife gets back
her swan-shirt and flies away from him, never to
return. But it is not always a shirt of feathers.
In one German story, a nobleman hunting deer
finds a maiden bathing in a clear pool in the
forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes
her necklace, at which she loses the power to
flee. They are married, and she bears seven sons
at once, all of whom have gold chains about
their necks, and are able to transform them-
selves into swans whenever they like. A Flem-
ish legend tells of three Nixies, or water-sprites,
who came out of the Meuse one autumn even-
ing, and helped the villagers celebrate the end
of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never
been seen in Flanders, and they could sing as
well as they could dance. As the night was
warm, one of them took ofF her gloves and gave
them to her partner to hold for her. When the

1 The feather dress reappears in the Arabian story of Has-
san of El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the
Jinniya. See Lane's Arabian Nights , vol. iii. p 380.
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 179.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

clock struck twelve the other two started off
in hot haste, and then there was a hue and cry
for gloves. The lad would keep them as love-
tokens, and so the poor Nixie had to go home
without them ; but she must have died on the
way, for next morning the waters of the Meuse
were blood-red, and those damsels never re-
turned.

In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals
cast off their skins every ninth night, assume
human forms, and sing and dance like men and
women until daybreak, when they resume their
skins and their seal natures. Of course a man
once found and hid one of these sealskins, and
so got a mermaid for a wife ; and of course she
recovered the skin and escaped.1 On the coasts
of Ireland it is supposed to be quite an ordinary
thing for young sea-fairies to get human hus-
bands in this way ; the brazen things even come
to shore on purpose, and leave their red caps
lying around for young men to pick up ; but it
behooves the husband to keep a strict watch
over the red cap if he would not see his chil-
dren left motherless.

This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota
to the superstitions of witchcraft. An Irish story
tells how Red James was aroused from sleep
one night by noises in the kitchen. Going down

1 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, iii. 173; Kennedy, Fic-
tions of the Irish Celts, p. 123.

136

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

to the door, he saw a lot of old women drinking
punch around the fireplace, and laughing and
joking with his housekeeper. When the punch-
bowl was empty, they all put on red caps, and
singing

" By yarrow and rue,
And my red cap too,

Hie me over to England,"

they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into
the room, and seized the housekeeper's cap, and
went along with them. They flew across the
sea to a castle in England, passed through the
keyholes from room to room and into the cel-
lar, where they had a famous carouse. Unluck-
ily, Jimmy, being unused to such good cheer, got
drunk, and forgot to put on his cap when the
others did. So next morning the lord's butler
found him dead-drunk on the cellar floor, sur-
rounded by empty casks. He was sentenced to
be hung without any trial worth speaking of;
but as he was carted to the gallows an old woman
cried out, " Ach, Jimmy alanna ! Would you
be afther dyin' in a strange land without your
red birredh ? " The lord made no objections,
and so the red cap was brought and put on him.
Accordingly when Jimmy had got to the gal-
lows and was making his last speech for the
edification of the spectators, he unexpectedly
and somewhat irrelevantly exclaimed, " By yar-
row and rue," etc., and was off like a rocket,
137

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

shooting through the blue air en route for old
Ireland.1

In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes
into the kitchen of a great house every night,
and washes the dishes and scours the tins, so
that the servants lead an easy life of it. After
a while in their exuberant gratitude they offer
him any present for which he may feel inclined
to ask. He desires only " an ould coat, to keep
the chill off of him these could nights ; " but as
soon as he gets into the coat he resumes his
human form and bids them good-by, and thence-
forth they may wash their own dishes and scour
their own tins, for all him.

But we are diverging from the subject of
swan-maidens, and are in danger of losing our-
selves in that labyrinth of popular fancies which
is more intricate than any that Daidalos ever
planned. The significance of all these sealskins
and feather dresses and mermaid caps and were-
wolf girdles may best be sought in the etymo-
logy of words like the German leichnam^ in which
the body is described as a garment of flesh for
the soul.2 In the nai've philosophy of primitive
thinkers, the soul, in passing from one visible
shape to another, had only to put on the out-
ward integument of the creature in which it
wished to incarnate itself. With respect to the

1 Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.

2 Baring- Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 163.

138

WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

mode of metamorphosis, there is little difference
between the werewolf and the swan-maiden ;
and the similarity is no less striking between the
genesis of the two conceptions. The original
werewolf is the night-wind, regarded now as a
manlike deity and now. as a howling lupine fiend ;
and the original swan-maiden is the light fleecy
cloud, regarded either as a woman-like goddess
or as a bird swimming in the sky sea. The one
conception has been productive of little else but
horrors ; the other has given rise to a great vari-
ety of fanciful creations, from the treacherous
mermaid and the fiendish nightmare to the
gentle Undine, the charming Nausikaa, and the
stately Muse of classic antiquity.

We have seen that the original werewolf,
howling in the wintry blast, is a kind of psycho-
pomp, or leader of departed souls ; he is the wild
ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under
the window of a sick-chamber is even now a
sound of ill omen. The swan-maiden has also
been supposed to summon the dying to her
home in the Phaiakian land. The Valkyries,
with their shirts of swan plumage, who hovered
over Scandinavian battlefields to receive the
souls of falling heroes, were identical with the
Hindu Apsaras ; and the Houris of the Mussul-
man belong to the same family. Even for the
angels, — women with large wings, who are seen
in popular pictures bearing mortals on high to-
139

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ward heaven, — we can hardly claim a different
kinship. Melusina, when she leaves the castle
of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee ; and it has
been a common superstition among sailors, that
the appearance of a mermaid, with her comb
and looking-glass, foretokens shipwreck, with
the loss of all on board.

October, 1870.

140

IV

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

WHEN Maitland blasphemously as-
serted that God was but "a Bogie
of the nursery," he unwittingly made
a remark as suggestive in point of philology as it
was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When
examined with the lenses of linguistic science,
the " Bogie " or " Bug-a-boo " or " Bugbear"
of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only
with the fairy " Puck," whom Shakespeare has
immortalized, but also with the Slavonic " Bog "
and the " Baga " of the Cuneiform Inscriptions,
both of which are names for the Supreme Being.
If we proceed further, and inquire after the an-
cestral form of these epithets, — so strangely
incongruous in their significations, — we shall
find it in the Old Aryan " Bhaga," which reap-
pears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas,
and has left a memento of itself in the sur-
name of the Phrygian Zeus " Bagaios." It
seems originally to have denoted either the un-
clouded sun or the sky of noonday illumined
by the solar rays. In Sayana's commentary on
the Rig- Veda, Bhaga is enumerated among the
141

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

seven (or eight) sons of Aditi, the boundless
Orient ; and he is elsewhere described as the
lord of life, the giver of bread, and the bringer
of happiness.1

Thus the same name which, to the Vedic
poet, to the Persian of the time of Xerxes, and
to the modern Russian, suggests the supreme
majesty of deity, is in English associated with
an ugly and ludicrous fiend, closely akin to that
grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey
was unable to think without laughing. Such is
the irony of fate toward a deposed deity. The
German name for idol — Abgott, that is, " ex-
god " or " dethroned god " — sums up in a sin-
gle etymology the history of the havoc wrought
by monotheism among the ancient symbols of
deity. In the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks
and Romans a niche was always in readiness for
every new divinity who could produce respect-
able credentials ; but flie triumph of mono-
theism converted the stately mansion into a
Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the
monotheist an " ex-god " was simply a devilish
deceiver of mankind whom the true God had
succeeded in vanquishing ; and thus the word
demon, which to the ancient meant a divine or
semi-divine being, came to be applied to fiends

1 Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. p. 12 ; Miiller, Rig-
Veda Sanhita, vol. i. pp. 2 3 0—2 5 1 ; Pick, Woerterbuch der
Indogermanischen Grundsprache, p. 124, s. v. Bhaga.
142

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

exclusively. Thus tHe Teutonic races, who
preserved the name of their highest divinity,
Odin, — originally, Guodan, — by which to de-
signate the God of the Christian,1 were unable to
regard the Bog of ancient tradition as anything
but an " ex-god " or vanquished demon.

The most striking illustration of this process
is to be found in the word devil itself. To a
reader unfamiliar with the endless tricks which
language delights in playing, it may seem shock-
ing to be told that the Gypsies use the word
devil as the name of God.2 This, however, is
not because these people have made the arch-
fiend an object of worship, but because the

1 In the North American Review, October, 1869, p.
354, I have collected a number of facts which seem to me to
prove beyond question that the name God is derived from
Guodan, the original form of Odin, the supreme deity of our
pagan forefathers. The case is exactly parallel to that of the
French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus of the pagan
Roman.

2 See Pott, Die Zigeuner, ii. 311 ; Kuhn, Beitrage, i.
147. Yet in the worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to be
found the element of diabolism invariably present in barbaric
worship. " Dewel, the great god in heaven {dewa, deus^),
is rather feared than loved by these weather-beaten outcasts,
for he harms them on their wanderings with his thunder and
lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with then-
dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfor-
tune falls on them ; and when a child dies, they say that
Dewel has eaten it." Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p.
248.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Gypsy language, descending directly from the
Sanskrit, has retained in its primitive exalted
sense a word which the English language has
received only in its debased and perverted sense.
The Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull,
djevful,, may all be traced back to the Zend dev,
a name in which is implicitly contained the
record of the oldest monotheistic revolution
known to history. The influence of the so-called
Zoroastrian reform upon the long-subsequent
development of Christianity will receive further
notice in the course of this paper ; for the pre-
sent it is enough to know that it furnished for
all Christendom the name by which it desig-
nates the author of evil. To the Parsee follower
of Zarathustra the name of the Devil has very
nearly the same signification as to the Christian ;
yet, as Grimm has shown, it is nothing else
than a corruption of (leva, the Sanskrit name for
God. When Zarathustra overthrew the prime-
val Aryan nature-worship in Bactria, this name
met the same evil fate which in early Christian
times overtook the word demon, and from a
symbol of reverence became henceforth a sym-
bol of detestation.2 But throughout the rest of

1 See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.

2 The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation
degraded the Vedic gods into demons. " In Buddhism we
find these ancient devas, Indra and the rest, carried about at
shows, as servants of Buddha, as goblins, or fabulous heroes. ' '

144

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

the Aryan world it achieved a nobler career,
producing the Greek theos, the Lithuanian
diewas, the Latin deus, and hence the modern
French Dieu, all meaning God.

If we trace back this remarkable word to its
primitive source in that once lost but now par-
tially recovered mother-tongue from which all
our Aryan languages are descended, we find a
root div or dyu, meaning " to shine." From the
first-mentioned form comes deva, with its nu-
merous progeny of good and evil appellatives;
from the latter is derived the name of Dyaus,
with its brethren, Zeus and Jupiter. In San-
skrit dyUy as a noun, means " sky " and " day ; "
and there are many passages in the Rig-Veda
where the character of the god Dyaus, as the
personification of the sky or the brightness of
the ethereal heavens, is unmistakably apparent.
This key unlocks for us one of the secrets of
Greek mythology. So long as there was for
Zeus no better etymology than that which as-
signed it to the root zettj "to live,"1 there was
little hope of understanding the nature of Zeus.

Max Miiller, Chips, i. 25. This is like the Christian change
of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the Devil.

1 Zeus — Aia — Zfjva — 81 ov £»}v del TTCUTI TOIS £axriv
VTrapx*'- Plato, Krafy/os, p. 396, A., with Stallbaum's
note. See, also, Proklos, Comm. ad Tim#um, ii. p. 226,
Schneider ; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p.
401, a, 15, who adopts the etymology Si ov £aj/x,ev. See, also,
Diogenes Laertius, vii. 147.

145

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

But when we learn that Zeus is identical with
Dyaus, the bright sky, we are enabled to under-
stand Horace's expression, " sub Jove frigido,"
and the prayer of the Athenians, " Rain, rain,
dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians, and
on the fields." l Such expressions as these were
retained by the Greeks and Romans long after
they had forgotten that their supreme deity was
once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from
whose mind the physical significance of the god's
name never wholly disappeared, could speak of
him as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ances-
tor of gods and men; and in this reverential
name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equiva-
lent of the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father.
The same root can be followed into Old Ger-
man, where Zio is the god of day ; and into
Anglo-Saxon, where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of
Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday.

Thus we again reach the same results which
were obtained from the examination of the name
Ehaga. These various names for the supreme
Aryan god, which without the help afforded by
the Vedas could never have been interpreted,
are seen to have been originally applied to the
sun-illumined firmament. Countless other ex-

1 Eux?) 'AOyvauov, vtrov, v<rov, 3> <£iXe Zev, Kara rijs dpov-
pas rtav 'AOrjvaLdiv /cat TO>V Trc&W. Marcus Aurelius, v. 7 ;
ve 8' apa Zeus (Twee's. Horn. Iliad, xii. 25 ; cf. Petronius
Arbiter, Sat. xliv.

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

amples, when similarly analyzed, show that the
earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power,
nourishing man and sustaining the universe,
was suggested by the light of the mighty Sun ;
who, as modern science has shown, is the origi-
nator of all life and motion upon the globe,
and whom the ancients delighted to believe the
source, not only of " the golden light," l but of
everything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure.
Nevertheless, in accepting this conclusion as
well established by linguistic science, we must
be on our guard against an error into which
writers on mythology are very liable to fall.
Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neither
Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was
ever worshipped by the ancient Aryan in any-
thing like a monotheistic sense. To interpret
Zeus or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan
god, and to regard classic paganism as one of
the degraded remnants of a primeval monothe-
ism, is to sin against the canons of a sound
inductive philosophy. Philology itself teaches
us that this could not have been so. Father
Dyaus was originally the bright sky and nothing
more. Although his name became generalized,
in the classic languages, into deus^ or God, it is
quite certain that in early days, before the Aryan
separation, it had acquired no such exalted sig-

1 " II Sol, dell aurea luce eterno fonte." Tasso, Gerttsa-
iemme, xv. 47 ; cf. Dante, Paradiso, x. 28.

H7

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

nificance. It was only in Greece and Rome —
or, we may say, among the still united Italo-
Hellenic tribes — that Jupiter-Zeus attained a
preeminence over all other deities. The people
of Iran quite rejected him, the Teutons preferred
Thor and Odin, and in India he was super-
seded, first by Indra, afterwards by Brahma and
Vishnu. We need not, therefore, look for a
single supreme divinity among the old Aryans ;
nor may we expect to find any sense, active or
dormant, of monotheism in the primitive intel-
ligence of uncivilized men.1 The whole fabric
of comparative mythology, as at present consti-
tuted, and as described above, in the first of
these papers, rests upon the postulate that the
earliest religion was pure fetichism.

In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old
Aryans the gods are presented to us only as
vague powers, with their nature and attributes
dimly defined, and their relations to each other

1 The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the
tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the
early missionaries find a word to express the idea of God.
Manitou and Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural
powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy Indian conjurer up to
Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a
circumlocution, — ' the great chief of men,' or ' he_who lives
in the sky.' " Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. Ixxix.
"The Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied
none ; doubtless because their mythology had no beings suffi-
ciently distinct to swear by." Ibid. p. 31.
148

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

fluctuating and often contradictory. There is
no theogony, no regular subordination of one
deity to another. The same pair of divinities
appear now as father and daughter, now as
brother and sister, now as husband and wife;
and again they quite lose their personality, and
are represented as mere natural phenomena. As
Miiller observes, " The poets of the Veda in-
dulged freely in theogonic speculations without
being frightened by any contradictions. They
knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew
of Agni as the god of gods, they knew of Varuna
as the ruler of all ; but they were by no means
startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother,
or that their Agni [Latin ignis] was born like
a babe from the friction of two, fire-sticks, or
that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed
in the lap of Aditi." l Thus we have seen Bhaga,
the daylight, represented as the offspring of
Aditi, the boundless Orient ; but he had several
brothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun,
Varuna, the overarching firmament, and Vivas-
vat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here
but so many different names for what is at bot-
tom one and the same conception. The com-
mon element which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in
Bhaga and Indra, was made an object of wor-
ship is the brightness, warmth, and life of day,
a* contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seem-

1 Miiller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, i. 230.
149

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ing death of the night-time. And this common
element was personified in as many different
ways as the unrestrained fancy of the ancient
worshipper saw fit to devise.1

Thus we begin to see why a few simple ob-
jects, like the sun, the sky, the dawn, and the
night, should be represented in mythology by
such a host of gods, goddesses, and heroes. For
at one time the Sun is represented as the con-
queror of hydras and dragons who hide away
from men the golden treasures of light and
warmth, and at another time he is represented
as a weary voyager traversing the sky sea amid
many perils, with the steadfast purpose of re-
turning to his western home and his twilight
bride; hence the different conceptions of Hera-
kles, Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is
represented as the son of the Dawn, and again,
with equal propriety, as the son of the Night,
and the fickle lover of the Dawn; hence we
have, on the one hand, stories of a virgin mother
who dies in giving birth to a hero, and, on the
other hand, stories of a beautiful maiden who is
forsaken and perhaps cruelly slain by her treach-
erous lover. Indeed, the Sun's adventures with
so many dawn-maidens have given him quite a
bad character, and the legends are numerous in
which he appears as the prototype of Don Juan.
Yet again his separation from the bride of his
1 Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

youth is described as due to no fault of his own,
but to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries
him away, as Aineias was compelled to abandon
Dido. Or, according to a third and equally
plausible notion, he is a hero of ascetic virtues,
and the dawn-maiden is a wicked enchantress,
daughter of the sensual Aphrodite, who vainly
endeavours to seduce him. In the story of
Odysseus these various conceptions are blended
together. When enticed by artful women,1 he
yields for a while to the temptation ; but by and
by his longing to see Penelope takes him home-
ward, albeit with a record which Penelope might
not altogether have liked. Again, though the
Sun, " always roaming with a hungry heart,"
has seen many cities and customs of strange
men, he is nevertheless confined to a single
path, — a circumstance which seems to have
occasioned much speculation in the primeval
mind. Garcilaso de la Vega relates of a certain
Peruvian Inca, who seems to have been an

1 It should be borne in mind, however, that one of the
women who tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a
goddess of darkness ; Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the
myth of Tannhauser. Kirke, on the other hand, seems to be
a dawn-maiden, like Medeia, whom she resembles. In her
the wisdom of the dawn-goddess Athene, the loftiest of Greek
divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an enchantress.
She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen
Labe, whose sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder,
king of Persia.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

cc infidel " with reference to the orthodox my-
thology of his day, that he thought the Sun was
not such a mighty god after all ; for if he were,
he would wander about the heavens at random
instead of going forever, like a horse in a tread-
mill, along the same course. The American
Indians explained this circumstance by myths
which told how the Sun was once caught and
tied with a chain which* would only let him
swing a little way to one side or the other. The
ancient Aryan developed the nobler myth of the
labours of Herakles, performed in obedience
to the bidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun
must needs destroy its parents, the Night and
the Dawn; and accordingly his parents, fore-
warned by prophecy, expose him in infancy, or
order him to be put to death ; but his tragic
destiny never fails to be accomplished to the
letter. And again the Sun, who engages in
quarrels not his own, is sometimes represented
as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like
Achilleus and Meleagros : he is short-lived and
ill-fated, born to do much good and to be re-
paid with ingratitude ; his life depends on the
duration of a burning brand, and when that is
extinguished he must die.

The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidi-
pous, well illustrates the multiplicity of con-
ceptions which clustered about the daily career
of the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been
152

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

warned by the Delphic oracle that he was in
danger of death from his own son. The newly
born Oidipous was therefore exposed on the
hillside ; but, like Romulus and Remus, and
all infants similarly situated in legend, was duly
rescued. He was taken to Corinth, where he
grew up to manhood. Journeying once to
Thebes, he got into a quarrel with an old man
whom he met on the road, and slew him, who
was none other than his father, Laios. Reach-
ing Thebes, he found the city harassed by the
Sphinx, who afflicted the land with drought
until she should receive an answer to her rid-
dles. Oidipous destroyed the monster by solv-
ing her dark sayings, and as a reward received
the kingdom, with his own mother, lokaste, as
his bride. Then the Erinyes hastened the dis-
covery of these dark deeds ; lokaste died in her
bridal chamber ; and Oidipous, having blinded
himself, fled to the grove of the Eumenides,
near Athens, where, amid flashing lightning
and peals of thunder, he died.

Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar he-
roes, from Herakles and Perseus to Sigurd and
William Tell, he performs his marvellous deeds
at the behest of others. His father, Laios, is
none other than the Vedic Dasyu, the night-
demon who is sure to be destroyed by his solar
offspring. In the evening, Oidipous is united
to the Dawn, the mother who had borne him

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

at daybreak ; and here the original story doubt-
less ended. In the Vedic hymns we find Indra,
the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne), the Dawn,
whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight,
marries. To the Indian mind the story was
here complete ; but the Greeks had forgotten
and outgrown the primitive signification of the
myth. To them Oidipous and lokaste were
human, or at least anthropomorphic beings ;
and a marriage between them was a fearful crime
which called for bitter expiation. Thus the lat-
ter part of the story arose in the effort to satisfy
a moral feeling. As the name of Laios denotes
the dark night, so, like lole, Oinone, and lamos,
the word lokaste signifies the delicate violet
tints of the morning and evening clouds. Oidi-
pous was exposed, like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic
word meaning " the earth "), because the sun-
light in the morning lies upon the hillside.1 He
is borne on to the destruction of his father and
the incestuous marriage with his mother by an
irresistible Moira, or Fate ; the sun cannot but
slay the darkness and hasten to the couch of

1 The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage ; but the
story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as
much as the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and
Barbarossa. His grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical
creation, his name being identical with that of the night-
demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the Shah-Nameh as the
biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan
Nations, ii. 358.

'54

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

the violet twilight.1 The Sphinx is the storm-
demon who sits on the cloud-rock and impri-
sons the rain ; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi,
or Echidna, and Chimaira, and is akin to the
throttling snakes of darkness which the jealous
Here sent to destroy Herakles in his cradle.
The idea was not derived from Egypt, but the
Greeks, on rinding Egyptian figures resembling
their conception of the Sphinx, called them by
the same name. The omniscient Sun compre-
hends the sense of her dark mutterings, and
destroys her, as Indra slays Vritra, bringing
down rain upon the parched earth. The Eri-
nyes, who bring to light the crimes of Oidipous,
have been explained, in a previous paper, as the
personification of daylight, which reveals the
evil deeds done under the cover of night. The
grove of the Erinyes, like the garden of the
Hyperboreans, represents "the fairy network
of clouds, which are the first to receive and the
last to lose the light of the sun in the morning
and in the evening ; hence, although Oidipous
dies in a thunderstorm, yet the Eumenides are
kind to him, and his last hour is one of deep
peace and tranquillity." 2 To the last remains
with him his daughter Antigone, " she who is

1 In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed
into the curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from rest-
ing until the day of judgment.

3 Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.

'55

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

born opposite," the pale light which springs up
opposite to the setting sun.

These examples show that a story-root may
be as prolific of heterogeneous offspring as a
word-root. Just as we find the root spak, " to
look," begetting words so various as sceptic,
bishop, speculate, conspicuous, species, and spice, we
must expect to find a simple representation of
the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyri-
cally given in the Veda, branching off into stories
as diversified as those of Oidipous, Herakles,
Odysseus, and Siegfried. In fact, the types
upon which stories are constructed are wonder-
fully few. Some clever playwright — I believe
it was Scribe — has said that there are only
seven possible dramatic situations ; that is, all the
plays in the world may be classed with some one
of seven archetypal dramas.1 If this be true, the
astonishing complexity of mythology taken in
the concrete, as compared with its extreme sim-
plicity when analyzed, need not surprise us.

The extreme limits of divergence between
stories descended from a common root are prob-
ably reached in the myths of light and darkness

1 In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk- Lore of
the Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has
made an ingenious and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the
entire existing mass of household legends to about fifty story-
roots ; and his list, though both redundant and defective, is
nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very instructive.

156

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

with which the present discussion is mainly con-
cerned. The subject will be best elucidated by
taking a single one of these myths and follow-
ing its various fortunes through different regions
of the Aryan world. The myth of Hercules
and Cacus has been treated by M. Breal in an
essay which is one of the most valuable contri-
butions ever made to the study of comparative
mythology ; and while following his footsteps
our task will be an easy one.

The battle between Hercules and Cacus, al-
though one of the oldest of the traditions com-
mon to the whole Indo-European race, appears
in Italy as a purely local legend, and is narrated
as such by Virgil, in the eighth book of the
jEneid ; by Livy, at the beginning of his his-
tory ; and by Propertius and Ovid. Hercules,
journeying through Italy after his victory over
Geryon, stops to rest by the bank of the Tiber.
While he is taking his repose, the three-headed
monster Cacus, a son of Vulcan and a formid-
able brigand, comes and steals his cattle, and
drags them tail foremost to a secret cavern in
the rocks. But the lowing of the cows arouses
Hercules, and he runs toward the cavern where
the robber, already frightened, has taken refuge.
Armed with a huge flinty rock, he breaks open
the entrance of the cavern, and confronts the
demon within, who vomits forth flames at him
and roars like the thunder in the storm-cloud.
U7

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

After a short combat, his hideous body falls at
the feet of the invincible hero, who erects on the
spot an altar to Jupiter Inventor, in commem-
oration of the recovery of his cattle. Ancient
Rome teemed with reminiscences of this event,
which Livy regarded as first in the long series
of the exploit's" of his countrymen. The place
where Hercules pastured his oxen was known
long after as the Forum Boarium ; near it the
Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection of
the monster's triple head ; and in the time of
Diodorus Siculus sightseers were shown the
cavern of Cacus on the slope of the Aventine.
Every tenth day the earlier generations of Ro-
mans celebrated the victory with solemn sacri-
fices at the Ara Maxima ; and on days of tri-
umph the fortunate general deposited there a
tithe of his booty, to be distributed among the
citizens.

In this famous myth, however, the god Her-
cules did not originally figure. The Latin Her-
cules was an essentially peaceful and domestic
deity, watching over households and inclosures,
and nearly akin to Terminus and the Penates.
He does not appear to have been a solar divinity
at all. But the purely accidental resemblance
of his name to that of the Greek deity Hera-
kles,1 and the manifest identity of the Cacus

1 There is nothing in common between the names Hercules
and Herakles. The latter is a compound, formed like Themis-

158

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

myth with the story of the victory of Herakles
over Geryon, led to the substitution of Hercu-
les for the original hero of the legend, who was
none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine
name Sancus. Now Johannes Lydus informs
us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified " the sky,"
a meaning which we have already seen to belong
to the name Jupiter. The same substitution of
the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to
the alteration of the name of the demon over-
come by his thunderbolts. The corrupted title
Cacus was supposed to be identical with the
Greek word kakos, meaning "evil," and the
corruption was suggested by the epithet of
Herakles, Alexikakos, or " the averter of ill."
Originally, however, the name was C*ecius, " he
who blinds or darkens," and it corresponds
literally to the name of the Greek demon Kai-

tokles ; the former is a simple derivative from the root of fier-
cere, " to inclose." If Herakles had any equivalent in Latin,
it would necessarily begin with S, and not with H, as septa
corresponds to €7rra, sequor to eirofj.at, etc. It should be noted,
however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of his His-
tory, abandons this view, and observes : " Auch der grie-
chische Herakles ist friih als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in
Italien einheimisch und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise auf-
gefasst worden, wie es scheint zunachst als Gott des gewagten
Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen Vermogensvermehrung. "
Romische Geschichte, i. 1 8 1 . One would gladly learn Momm-
sen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible
opinion.

'59

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

kias, whom an old proverb, preserved by Aulus
Gellius, describes as a stealer of the clouds.1

Thus the significance of the myth becomes
apparent. The three-headed Cacus is seen to
be a near kinsman of Geryon's three-headed
dog Orthros, and of the three-headed Kerberos,
the hellhound who guards the dark regions
below the horizon. He is the original werewolf
or Rakshasa, the fiend of the storm who steals
the bright cattle of Helios, and hides them in
the black cavernous rock, from which they are
afterward rescued by the schamir or lightning-
stone of the solar hero. The physical character
of the myth is apparent even in the description
of Virgil, which reads wonderfully like a Vedic
hymn in celebration of the exploits of Indra.
But when we turn to the Veda itself, we find
the correctness of the interpretation demon-
strated again and again, with inexhaustible pro-
digality of evidence. Here we encounter again
the three-headed Orthros under the identical
title of Vritra, " he who shrouds or envelops,"
called also (^ushna, "he who parches," Pani,
"the robber," and Ahiy "the strangler." In
many hymns of the Rig- Veda the story is told
over and over, like a musical theme arranged with
variations. Indra, the god of light, is a herds-

1 For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, see Prel-
ler, Romische Mythologie, p. 635 ; Vollmer, Mythologie,
p. 970.

1 60

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

man who tends a herd of bright golden or violet-
coloured cattle. Vritra, a snake-like monster
with three heads, steals them and hides them in
a cavern, but Indra slays him as Jupiter slew
Caecius, and the cows are recovered. The lan-
guage of the myth is so significant that the
Hindu commentators of the Veda have them-
selves given explanations of it similar to those
proposed by modern philologists. To them the
legend never became devoid of sense, as the
myth of Geryon appeared to Greek scholars
like Apollodoros.1

These celestial cattle, with their resplendent
coats of purple and gold, are the clouds lit up
by the solar rays ; but the demon who steals
them is not always the fiend of the storm, act-
ing in that capacity. They are stolen every
night by Vritra the concealer and Caecius the
darkener, and Indra is obliged to spend hours
in looking for them, sending Sarama, the incon-
stant twilight, to negotiate for their recovery.
Between the storm-myth and the myth of night
and morning the resemblance is sometimes so
close as to confuse the interpretation of the
two. Many legends which Max Miiller ex-
plains as myths of the victory of day over night
are explained by Dr. Kuhn as storm-myths ;
and the disagreement between two such power-

1 Burnouf, Bhagavata-Purana, iii. p. -Ixxxvi ; Brcal, op.
cit. p. 98.

161

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ful champions would be a standing reproach
to what is rather prematurely called the science
of comparative mythology, were it not easy to
show that the difference is merely apparent and
non-essential. It is the old story of the shield
with two sides ; and a comparison of the ideas
fundamental to these myths will show that there
is no valid ground for disagreement in the in-
terpretation of them. The myths of schamir and
the divining rod, analyzed in a previous paper,
explain the rending of the thundercloud and
the procuring of water without especial refer-
ence to any struggle between opposing divini-
ties. But in the myth of Hercules and Cacus,
the fundamental idea is the victory of the solar
god over the robber who steals the light. Now
whether the robber carries off the light in the
evening when Indra has gone to sleep, or boldly
rears his black form against the sky during the
daytime, causing darkness to spread over the
earth, would make little difference to the fram-
ers of the myth. To a chicken a solar eclipse is
the same thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost
accordingly. Why, then, should the primitive
thinker have made a distinction between the
darkening of the sky caused by black clouds
and that caused by the rotation of the earth ?
He had no more conception of the scientific
explanation of these phenomena than the chicken
has of the scientific explanation of an eclipse.
162

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

For him it was enough to know that the solar
radiance was stolen, in the one case as in the
other, and to suspect that the same demon was
to blame for both robberies.

The Veda itself sustains this view. It is cer-
tain that the victory of Indra over Vritra is es-
sentially the same as his victory over the Panis.
Vritra, the storm-fiend, is himself called one of
the Panis ; yet the latter are uniformly repre-
sented as night-demons. They steal Indra's
golden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths
to a dark hiding-place near the eastern horizon.
Indra sends the dawn-nymph, Sarama, to search
for them, but as she comes within sight of the
dark stable, the Panis try to coax her to stay
with them : " Let us make thee our sister, do
not go away again ; we will give thee part of
the cows, O darling."1 According to the text
of this hymn, she scorns their solicitations, but
elsewhere the fickle dawn-nymph is said to co-
quet with the powers of darkness. She does
not care for their cows, but will take a drink of
milk, if they will be so good as to get it for
her. Then she goes back and tells Indra that
she cannot find the cows. He kicks her with
his foot, and she runs back to the Panis, fol-
lowed by the god, who smites them all with his
unerring arrows and recovers the stolen light.
From such a simple beginning as this has been

1 Max Miiller, Science of Language, ii. 484.
'63

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

deduced the Greek myth of the faithlessness of
Helen.1

These night-demons, the Panis, though not
apparently regarded with any strong feeling of
moral condemnation, are nevertheless hated and
dreaded as the authors of calamity. They not
only steal the daylight, but they parch the earth
and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation
during the winter months. As C<ecius, the
"darkener," became ultimately changed into
CacuSj the " evil one," so the name of Vritra>
the " concealer," the most famous of the Panis,
was gradually generalized until it came to mean
"enemy," like the English word^dW, and be-
gan to be applied indiscriminately to any kind
of evil spirit. In one place he is called Adeva,
the " enemy of the gods," an epithet exactly
equivalent to the Persian dev.

In the Zendavesta the myth of Hercules
and Cacus has given rise to a vast system of
theology. The fiendish Panis are concentrated
in Ahriman or Anro-mainyas, whose name sig-
nifies the " spirit of darkness," and who carries
on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or

1 As Max Miiller observes, '« Apart from all mythologi-
cal considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as
Helena in Greek." Op. fit. p. 490. The names corre-
spond phonetically letter for letter, as Surya corresponds to
Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to Achilleus.
Miiller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers
to the Panis.

164

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Ahuramazda, who is described by his ordinary
surname, Spentomainyas, as the " spirit of
light." The ancient polytheism here gives
' place to a refined dualism, not very different
from what in many Christian sects has passed
current as monotheism. Ahriman is the arch-
fiend, who struggles with Ormuzd, not for the
possession of a herd of perishable cattle, but
for the dominion of the universe. Ormuzd
creates the world pure and beautiful, but Ahri-
man comes after him and creates everything
that is evil in it. He not only keeps the earth
covered with darkness during half of the day,
and withholds the rain and destroys the crops,
but he is the author of all evil thoughts and
the instigator of all wicked actions. Like his
progenitor Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is
represented under the form of a serpent ; and
the destruction which ultimately awaits these
demons is also in reserve for him. Eventually
there is to be a day of reckoning, when Ahriman
will be bound in chains and rendered power-
less, or when, according to another account, he
will be converted to righteousness, as Burns
hoped and Origen believed would be the case
with Satan.

This dualism of the ancient Persians has
exerted a powerful influence upon the develop-
ment of Christian theology. The very idea of
an archfiend Satan, which Christianity received

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

from Judaism, seems either to have been sug-
gested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to
have derived its principal characteristics from
that source. There is no evidence that the
Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity,
possessed the conception of a Devil as the au-
thor of all evil. In the earlier books of the
Old Testament Jehovah is represented as dis-
pensing with his own hand the good and the
evil, like the Zeus of the Iliad.1 The story of
the serpent in Eden — an Aryan story in every
particular, which has crept into the Pentateuch
— is not once alluded to in the Old Testament;
and the notion of Satan as the author of evil
appears only in the later books, composed after
the Jews had come into close contact with Per-
sian ideas.2 In the Book of Job, as Reville

1 "I create evil," Isaiah xlv. 7 ; "Shall there be evil
in the city, and the Lord hath not done it ? " Amos iii. 6 ;
cf. Iliad, xxiv. 527, and contrast 2 Samuel xxiv. I with
I Chronicles xxi. I.

a Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in
the Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is
entirely the work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due,
naturally enough, to the habit, so common alike among the-
ologians and laymen, of reasoning about the Bible as if it
were a single book, and not a collection of writings of differ-
ent ages and of very different degrees of historic authenticity.
In a future work, entitled " Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to
examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the
garden of Eden. [It is to be suspected that chapters iii.-v.

1 66

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

observes, Satan is " still a member of the celes-
tial court, being one of the sons of the Elohim,
but having as his special office the continual
accusation of men, and having become so sus-
picious by his practice as public accuser that he
believes in the virtue of no one, and always
presupposes interested motives for the purest
manifestations of human piety." In this way
the character of this angel became injured, and
he became more and more an object of dread
and dislike to men, until the later Jews ascribed
to him all the attributes of Ahriman, and in
this singularly altered shape he passed into
Christian theology. Between the Satan of the
Book of Job and the mediaeval Devil the meta-
morphosis is as great as that which degraded
the stern Erinys, who brings evil deeds to light,
into the demon-like Fury who torments wrong-
doers in Tartarus ; and, making allowance for
difference of circumstances, the process of de-
gradation has been very nearly the same in the
two cases.

The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a
grotesque compound of elements derived from
all the systems of pagan mythology which
Christianity superseded. He is primarily a re-
bellious angel, expelled from heaven along with
his followers, like the giants who attempted to

of Excursions of an Evolutionist are fragments of Aryana
Vaedjo.]

I67

• MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of
Arabian legend who revolted against the bene-
ficent rule of Solomon. As the serpent prince
of the outer darkness, he retains the old charac-
teristics of Vritra, Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna.
As the black dog which appears behind the
stove in Dr. Faust's study, he is the classic hell-
hound Kerberos, the Vedic £arvara. From the
sylvan deity Pan he gets his goat-like body,
his horns and cloven hoofs. Like the wind-god
Orpheus, to whose music the trees bent their
heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on the
bagpipes. Like those other wind-gods the psy-
chopomp Hermes and the wild huntsman Odin,
he is the prince of the powers of the air : his
flight through the midnight sky, attended by
his troop of witches mounted on their brooms,
which sometimes break the boughs and sweep
the leaves from the trees, is the same as the fu-
rious chase of the Erlking Odin or the Burckar
Vittikab. He is Dionysos, who causes red wine
to flow from the dry wood, alike on the deck
of the Tyrrhenian pirate-ship and in Auerbach's
cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith,
a skilful worker in metals and a wonderful ar-
chitect, like the classic fire-god Hephaistos or
Vulcan ; and, like Hephaistos, he is lame from
the effects of his fall from heaven. From the
lightning-god Thor he obtains his red beard,
his pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts ;
168

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

and, like that ancient deity, he is in the habit
of beating his wjfe behind the door when the
rain falls during sunshine. Finally, he takes
a hint from Poseidon and from the swan-
maidens, and appears as a water imp or Nixy
(whence probably his name of Old Nick), and
as the Davy (deva) whose " locker " is situated
at the bottom of the sea.1

According to the Scotch divines of the seven-
teenth century, the Devil is a learned scholar
• and profound thinker. Having profited by six
thousand years of intense study and meditation,
he has all science, philosophy, and theology at
his tongue's end ; and, as his skill has increased
with age, he is far more than a match for mor-
tals in cunning.2 Such, however, is not the view
taken by mediaeval mythology, which usually re-
presents his stupidity as equalling his malignity.
The victory of Hercules over Cacus is repeated
in a hundred mediaeval legends in which the
Devil is overreached and made a laughing-stock.
The germ of this notion may be found in the

1 For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan
Nations, vol. ii. pp. 358, 366 ; to which I am indebted for
several of the details here given. Compare Welcker,
Griechische Gotterlehre, i. 66 1, seq.

2 Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are
cited in Buckle's History of Civilization, vol. ii. p. 368.
The same belief is implied in the quaint monkish tale of
«' Celestinus and the Miller's Horse." See Tales from the
Gesta Romanorum, p. 134.

169

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which is
itself a victory of the sun-hero over the night-
demon, and which curiously reappears in a
Middle- Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The
Devil asks a man who is moulding buttons
what he may be doing ; and when the man an-
swers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further
whether he can give him a pair of new eyes. He
is told to come again another day ; and when
he makes his appearance accordingly, the man
tells him that the operation cannot be performed
rightly unless he is first tightly bound with his
back fastened to a bench. While he is thus
pinioned he asks the man's name. The reply is
Issi ('himself'). When the lead is melted, the
Devil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly
stream. As soon as he is blinded, he starts up
in agony, bearing away the bench to which he
had been bound ; and when some workpeople
in the fields ask him who had thus treated him,
his answer is, f Issi teggi ' (c Self did it '). With
a laugh they bid him lie on the bed which he
has made : f selbst gethan, selbst habe.' The
Devil died of his new eyes, and was never seen
again."

In his attempts to obtain human souls the
Devil is frequently foiled by the superior cun-
ning of mortals. Once, he agreed to build a
house for a peasant in exchange for the peas-
ant's soul ; but if the house were not finished
170

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

before cockcrow, the contract was to be null and
void. Just as the Devil was putting on the last
tile the man imitated a cockcrow and waked
up all the roosters in the neighbourhood, so
that the fiend had his labour for his pains. A
merchant of Louvain once sold himself to the
Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of
riches for seven years, and then came to get
him. The merchant " took the Devil in a
friendly manner by the hand and, as it was just
evening, said, f Wife, bring a light quickly for
the gentleman.' * That is not at all necessary,'
said the Devil ; f I am merely come to fetch
you.' * Yes, yes, that I know very well,' said
the merchant, f only just grant me the time till
this little candle-end is burnt out, as I have a
few letters to sign and to put on my coat.'
f Very well,' said the Devil, ' but only till the
candle is burnt out.' l Good,' said the mer-
chant, and going into the next room, ordered
the maid-servant to place a large cask full of
water close to a very deep pit that was dug in
the garden. The men-servants also carried, each
of them, a cask to the spot ; and when all was
done, they were ordered each to take a shovel,
and stand round the pit. The merchant then
returned to the Devil, who seeing that not more
than about an inch of candle remained, said,
laughing, c Now get yourself ready, it will soon
be burnt out.' c That I see, and am content ;
171

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

but I shall hold you to your word, and stay till
it is burnt.' ' Of course,' answered the Devil ;
' I stick to my word.' c It is dark in the next
room,' continued the merchant, ( but I must
find the great book with clasps, so let me just
take the light for one moment.' ' Certainly,'
said the Devil, c but I '11 go with you.' He
did so, and the merchant's trepidation was now
on the increase. When in the next room he
said on a sudden, ' Ah, now I know, the key
is in the garden door.' And with these words
he ran out with the light into the garden, and
before the Devil could overtake him, threw it
into the pit, and the men and the maids poured
water upon it, and then filled up the hole with
earth. Now came the Devil into the garden
and asked, f Well, did you get the key? and
how is it with the candle ? where is it ? ' * The
candle ? ' said the merchant. f Yes, the candle.'
' Ha, ha, ha ! it is not yet burnt out,' answered
the merchant, laughing, f and will not be burnt
out for the next fifty years ; it lies there a hun-
dred fathoms deep in the earth.' When the
Devil heard this he screamed awfully, and went
ofF with a most intolerable stench." *

One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler

and could n't hit a bird at a dozen paces, sold

his soul to the Devil in order to become a Frei-

schiitz. The fiend was to come for him in seven

1 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, vol. ii. p. 258.

172

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

years, but must be always able to name the an-
imal at which he was shooting, otherwise the
compact was to be nullified. After that day the
fowler never missed his aim, and never did a
fowler command such wages. When the seven
years were out the fowler told all these things
to his wife, and the twain hit upon an expedient
for cheating the Devil. The woman stripped
herself, daubed her whole body with molasses,
and rolled herself up in a feather-bed, cut open
for this purpose. Then she hopped and skipped
about the field where her husband stood parley-
ing with Old Nick. " There 's a shot for you,
fire away," said the Devil. " Of course I '11 fire,
but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it
is ; else our agreement is cancelled, Old Boy."
There was no help for it ; the Devil had to
own himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a
whiff of brimstone which nearly suffocated the
Freischiitz and his good woman.1

In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still
more ingloriously defeated. Gambrinus was a
fiddler, who, being jilted by his sweetheart,

1 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, vol. ii. p. 259. In the
Norse story of " Not a Pin to choose between them," the
old woman is in doubt as to her own identity, on waking up
after the butcher has dipped her in a tar-barrel and rolled her
on a heap of feathers ; and when Tray barks at her, her per-
plexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the Frei-
schiatz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.

173

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

went out into the woods to hang himself. As
he was sitting on the bough, with the cord about
his neck, preparatory to taking the fatal plunge,
suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared
before him, and offered his services. He might
become as wealthy as he liked, and make his
sweetheart burst with vexation at her own folly,
but in thirty years he must give up his soul to
Beelzebub. The bargain was struck, for Gam-
brinus thought thirty years a long time to enjoy
one's self in, and perhaps the Devil might get
him in any event ; as well be hung for a sheep
as for a lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented
chiming bells and lager beer, for both of which
achievements his name is held in grateful re-
membrance by the Teuton. No sooner had the
Holy Roman Emperor quaffed a gallon or two
of the new beverage, than he made Gambrinus
Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders, and
then it was the fiddler's turn to laugh at the
discomfiture of his old sweetheart. Gambrinus
kept clear of women, says the legend, and so
lived in peace. For thirty years he sat beneath
his belfry with the chimes, meditatively drink-
ing beer with his nobles and burghers around
him. Then Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of his
imps, with orders to bring back Gambrinus be-
fore midnight. But Jocko was, like Swiveller's
Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer, never
having drunk of it even in a sip, and the Flem-
174

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

ish schoppen were too much for him. He fell
into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until
noon next day, at which he was so mortified
that he had not the face to go back to hell at
all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a cen-
tury or two, and drank so much beer that he
turned into a beer-barrel.1

The character of gullibility attributed to the
Devil in these legends is probably derived from
the Trolls, or " night-folk," of Northern my-
thology. In most respects the Trolls resemble
the Teutonic elves and fairies, and the Jinn or
Efreets of the Arabian Nights ; but their ped-
igree is less honourable. The fairies, or " White
Ladies," were not originally spirits of darkness,
but were nearly akin to the swan-maidens,
dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their
wrath was to be dreaded, they were not malig-
nant by nature. Christianity, having no place
for such beings, degraded them into something
like imps ; the most charitable theory being that
they were angels who had remained neutral
during Satan's rebellion, in punishment for
which Michael expelled them from heaven, but
has left their ultimate fate unannounced until
the day of judgment. The Jinn appear to have
been similarly degraded on the rise of Moham-
medanism. But the Trolls were always imps
of darkness. They are descended from the J6-

1 See Deulin, Contes (Tun Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

tuns, or Frost-Giants of Northern paganism,
and they correspond to the Panis, or night-
demons of the Veda. In many Norse tales they
are said to burst when they see the risen sun.1
They eat human flesh, are ignorant of the sim-
plest arts, and live in the deepest recesses of the
forest or in caverns on the hillside, where the
sunlight never penetrates. Some of these char-
acteristics may very likely have been suggested
by reminiscences of the primeval Lapps, from
whom the Aryan invaders wrested the domin-
ion of Europe.2 In some legends the Trolls are
represented as an ancient race of beings now
superseded by the human race. " ' What sort
of an earthworm is this ? ' said one Giant to
another, when they met a man as they walked.
' These are the earthworms that will one day
eat us up, brother,' answered the other; and
soon both .Giants left that part of Germany."
cc ' See what pretty playthings, mother ! ' cries
the Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron,
and shows her a plough, and horses, and a peas-
ant. f Back with them this instant,' cries the
mother in wrath, ' and put them down as care-
fully as you can, for these playthings can do our

1 Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and
No. XLII.

2 See Dasent' s Introduction, p. cxxxix ; Campbell, Talei
if the West Highlands, vol. iv. p. 344 j and Williams, /»-
dian Epic Poetry, p. 10.

176

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

race great harm, and when these come we must
budge.' " Very naturally the primitive Teuton,
possessing already the conception of night-de-
mons, would apply it to these men of the woods
whom even to this day his uneducated descend-
ants believe to be sorcerers, able to turn men
into wolves. But whatever contributions his-
torical fact may have added to his character, the
Troll is originally a creation of mythology, like
Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his uncouth
person, his cannibal appetite, and his lack of
wit. His ready gullibility is shown in the story
of " Boots who ate a Match with the Troll."
Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and the coun-
terpart alike of Jack the Giant-Killer and of
Odysseus, is the youngest of three brothers who
go into a forest to cut wood. The Troll appears
and threatens to kill any one who dares to med-
dle with his timber. The elder brothers flee,
but Boots puts on a bold face. He pulled a
cheese out of his scrip and squeezed it till the
whey began to spurt out. " Hold your tongue,
you dirty Troll," said he, " or I '11 squeeze you
as I squeeze this stone." So the Troll grew
timid and begged to be spared,1 and Boots let

1 " A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one
occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now
the Leopard had never seen a Ram before, and accordingly,
approaching submissively, he said, ' Good-day, friend ! what
may your name be ? ' The other, in his gruff voice, and
177

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

him off on condition that he would hew all day
with him. They worked till nightfall, and the
Troll's giant strength accomplished wonders.
Then Boots went home with the Troll, having
arranged that he should get the water while his
host made the fire. When they reached the hut
there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy
that none but a Troll could lift them, but Boots
was not to be frightened. " Bah ! " said he.
" Do you suppose I am going to get water in
those paltry hand-basins ? Hold on till I go
and get the spring itself! " " Oh, dear ! " said
the Troll, " I 'd rather not ; do you. make the
fire, and I '11 get the water." Then when the
soup was made, Boots challenged his new friend
to an eating match ; and tying his scrip in front
of him, proceeded to pour soup into it by the
ladleful. By and by the giant threw down his
spoon in despair, and owned himself conquered.
" No, no ! don't give it up yet," said Boots,
"just cut a hole in your stomach like this>
and you can eat forever." And suiting the ac-
tion to the words, he ripped open his scrip. So
the silly Troll cut himself open and died, and
Boots carried off all his gold and silver.

Once there was a Troll whose name was Wind-
striking his breast with his fore foot, said, < I am a Ram; who
are you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead
than alive ; and then, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home
as fast as he could." Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24.
I78

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

and-Weather, and Saint Olaf hired him to build
a church. If the church were completed within
a certain specified time, the Troll was to get pos-
session of Saint Olaf. The saint then planned
such a stupendous edifice that he thought the
giant would be forever building it ; but the work
went on briskly, and at the appointed day no-
thing remained but to finish the point of the
spire. In his consternation Olaf rushed about
until he passed by the Troll's den, when he
heard the giantess telling her children that their
father, Wind-and-Weather, was finishing his
church, and would be home to-morrow with
Saint Olaf. So the saint ran back to the church
and bawled out, " Hold on, Wind-and-Weather,
your spire is crooked ! " Then the giant tum-
bled down from thereof and broke into a thou-
sand pieces. As in the cases of the Mara and
the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end as
soon as the enchanter was called by name.

These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had
an ugly habit of carrying off beautiful prin-
cesses. This is strictly in keeping with their
character as night-demons, or Panis. In the
stories of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant, the
night-demon carries off the dawn-maiden after
having turned into stone her solar brethren. But
Boots, or Indra, in search of his kinsfolk, by
and by arrives at the Troll's castle, and then the
dawn-nymph, true to her fickle character, cajoles
179

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the Giant and enables Boots to destroy him.
In the famous myth which serves as the basis
for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied,
the dragon Fafnir steals the Valkyrie Brynhild
and keeps her shut up in a castle on the Glis-
tening Heath, until some champion shall be
found powerful enough to rescue her. The
castle is as hard to enter as that of the Sleeping
Beauty ; but Sigurd, the Northern Achilleus,
riding on his deathless horse, and wielding his
resistless sword Gram, forces his way in, slays
Fafnir, and recovers the Valkyrie.

In the preceding paper the Valkyries were
shown to belong to the class of cloud-maidens ;
and between the tale of Sigurd and that of Her-
cules and Cacus there is no difference, save that
the bright sunlit clouds which are represented
in the one as cows are in the other represented
as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they
reappear as the Golden Fleece, carried to the far
east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves
Niblungs, or " Children of the Mist " (Nephele),
, and there guarded by a dragon. In all these
myths a treasure is stolen by a fiend of darkness,
and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the
demon. And — remembering what Scribe said
about the fewness of dramatic types — I believe
we are warranted in asserting that all the stories
of lovely women held in bondage by monsters,
and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful
1 80

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

tasks, such as Don Quixote burned to achieve,
are derived ultimately from solar myths, like the
myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean
to say that the story-tellers who beguiled their
time in stringing together the incidents which
make up these legends were conscious of their
solar character. They did not go to work, with
malice prepense, to weave allegories and apo-
logues. The Greeks who first told the story of
Perseus and Andromeda, the Arabians who de-
vised the tale of Codadad and his brethren, the
Flemings who listened over their beer mugs to
the adventures of Culotte-Verte, were not think-
ing of sun-gods or dawn-maidens, or night-
demons ; and no theory of mythology can
be sound which implies such an extravagance.
Most of these stories have lived on the lips of
the common people ; and illiterate persons are
not in the habit of allegorizing in the style of
mediaeval monks or rabbinical commentators.
But what has been amply demonstrated is, that
the sun and the clouds, the light and the dark-
ness, were once supposed to be actuated by wills
analogous to the human will ; that they were
personified and worshipped or propitiated by
sacrifice ; and that their doings were described
in language which applied so well to the deeds
of human or quasi-human beings that in course
of time its primitive purport faded from recol-
lection. No competent scholar now doubts that
181

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the myths of the Veda and the Edda originated
in this way, for philology itself shows that the
names employed in them are the names of the
great phenomena of nature. And when once a
few striking stories had thus arisen, — when
once it had been told how Indra smote the
Panis, and how Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and
how Odysseus blinded the Kyklops, — then cer-
tain mythic or dramatic types had been called
into existence ; and to these types, preserved
in the popular imagination, future stories would
inevitably conform. We need, therefore, have
no hesitation in admitting a common origin for
the vanquished Panis and the outwitted Troll
or Devil ; we may securely compare the legends
of St. George and Jack the Giant-Killer with the
myth of Indra slaying Vritra ; we may see in
the invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a
doughty knight-errant of romance ; and we may
learn anew the lesson, taught with fresh empha-
sis by modern scholarship, that in the deepest
sense there is nothing new under the sun.

I am the more explicit on this point, because
it seems to me that the unguarded language of
many students of mythology is liable to give
rise to misapprehensions, and to discredit both
the method which they employ and the results
which they have obtained. If we were to give
full weight to the statements which are some-
times made, we should perforce believe that
182

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

primitive men had nothing to do but to pon-
der about the sun and the clouds, and to worry
themselves over the disappearance of daylight.
But there is nothing in the scientific interpreta-
tion of myths which obliges us to go any such
length. I do not suppose that any ancient Ar-
yan, possessed of good digestive powers and
endowed with sound common-sense, ever lay
awake half the night wondering whether the sun
would come back again.1 The child and the
savage believe of necessity that the future will
resemble the past, and it is only philosophy
which raises doubts on the subject.2 The pre-
dominance of solar legends in most systems of
mythology is not due to the lack of " that Ti-
tanic assurance with which we say, the sun must
rise ; " 3 nor again to the fact that the phenom-
ena of day and night are the most striking phe-
nomena in nature. Eclipses and earthquakes
and floods are phenomena of the most terrible

1 I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks,
Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 69.

2 Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about
the countries within the arctic circle where during part of the
year the sun never sets. " Their astonishment now knew no
bounds. * Ah ! that must be another sun, not the same as
the one we see here,' said an old man ; and in spite of all
my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted this opin-
ion." Grey's Journals, i. 293, cited in Tylor, Early His-
tory of Mankind, p. 301.

8 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 96.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

and astounding kind, and they have all gener-
ated myths ; yet their contributions to folk-lore
are scanty compared with those furnished by the
strife between the day-god and his enemies.
The sun-myths have been so prolific because
the dramatic types to which they have given rise
are of surpassing human interest. The dragon
who swallows the sun is no doubt a fearful
personage ; but the hero who toils for others,
who slays hydra-headed monsters, and dries the
tears of fair-haired damsels, and achieves success
in spite of incredible obstacles, is a being with
whom we can all sympathize, and of whom we
never weary of hearing.

With many of these legends which present
the myth of light and darkness in its most at-
tractive form, the reader is already acquainted,
and it is needless to retail stories which have
been told over and over again in books which
every one is presumed to have read. I will
content myself with a weird Irish legend, nar-
rated by Mr. Patrick Kennedy,1 in which we
here and there catch glimpses of the primitive
mythical symbols, as fragments of gold are seen
gleaming through the crystal of quartz.

Long before the Danes ever came to Ire-
land, there died at Muskerry a Sculloge, or
country farmer, who by dint of hard work and
close economy had amassed enormous wealth.

1 Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.
184

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

His only son did not resemble him. When the
young Sculloge looked about the house, the
day after his father's death, and saw the big
chests full of gold and silver, and the cup-
boards shining with piles of sovereigns, and the
old stockings stuffed with large and small coin,
he said to himself, " Bedad, how shall I ever be
able to spend the likes o' that ! " And so he
drank, and gambled, and wasted his time in
hunting and horse-racing, until after a while
he found the chests empty and the cupboards
poverty-stricken, and the stockings lean and
penniless. Then he mortgaged his farmhouse
and gambled away all the money he got for it,
and then he bethought him that a few hundred
pounds might be raised on his mill. But when
he went to look at it, he found "the dam
broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in
the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the
thatch of the house all gone, and the upper
millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat
of dust and mould over everything." So he
made up his mind to borrow a horse and take
one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his
habits.

As he was returning late in the evening from
this farewell hunt, passing through a lonely
glen he came upon an old man playing back-
gammon, betting on his left hand against his
right, and crying and cursing because the right
185

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

would win. " Come and bet with me," said he
to Sculloge. " Faith, I have but a sixpence in
the world," was the reply ; " but, if you like,
I '11 wager that on the right." " Done," said
the old man, who was a Druid ; " if you win
I '11 give you a hundred guineas." So the game
was played, and the old man, whose right hand
was always the winner, paid over the guineas
and told Sculloge to go to the Devil with
them.

Instead of following this bit of advice, how-
ever, the young farmer went home and began
to pay his debts, and next week he went to
tKe glen and won another game, and made the
Druid rebuild his mill. So Sculloge became
prosperous again, and by and by he tried his
luck a third time, and won a game played for
a beautiful wife. The Druid sent her to his
house the next morning before he was out of
bed, and hi« servants came knocking at the
door and crying, " Wake up ! wake up ! Master
Sculloge, there 's a young lady here to see you."
" Bedad, it 's the vanithee * herself," said Scul-
loge ; and getting up in a hurry, he spent three
quarters of an hour in dressing himself. At last
he went downstairs, and there on the sofa was
the prettiest lady ever seen in Ireland ! Natu-
rally, Sculloge's heart beat fast and his voice

1 A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, " lady of the
house."

186

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

trembled, as he begged the lady's pardon for
this Druidic style of wooing, and besought her
not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she
really liked him. But the young lady, who was
a king's daughter from a far country, was won-
drously charmed with the handsome farmer, and
so well did they get along that the priest was
sent for without further delay, and they were
^married before sundown. Sabina was the vani-
thee's name ; and she warned her husband to
have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the
old man of the glen. So for a while all went
happily, and the Druidic bride was as good as
she was beautiful. But by and by Sculloge be-
gan to think he was not earning money fast
enough. He could not bear to see his wife's
white hands soiled with work, and thought it
would be a fine thing if he could only afford to
keep a few more servants, and drive about with
Sabina in an elegant carriage^ and see her
clothed in silk and adorned with jewels.

" I will play one more game and set the stakes
high," said Sculloge to himself one evening, as
he sat pondering over these things ; and so,
without consulting Sabina, he stole away to the
glen, and played a game for ten thousand
guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to
pounce on his prey, and he did not play as
of old. Sculloge broke into a cold sweat with
agony and terror as he saw the left hand win !
187 -

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Then the face of Lassa Buaicht grew dark and
stern, and he laid on Sculloge the curse which
is laid upon the solar hero in misfortune, that
he should never sleep twice under the same
roof, or ascend the couch of the dawn-nymph,
his wife, until he should have procured and
brought to him the sword of light. When
Sculloge reached home, more dead than alive,
he saw that his wife knew all. Bitterly they^
wept together, but she told him that with cour-
age all might be set right. She gave him a
Druidic horse, which bore him swiftly over land
and sea, like the enchanted steed of the Arabian
Nights, until he reached the castle of his wife's
father, who, as Sculloge now learned, was a good
Druid, the brother of the evil Lassa Buaicht.
This good Druid told him that the sword of
light was kept by a third brother, the power-
ful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who dwelt in an
enchanted castle, which many brave heroes had
tried to enter, but the dark sorcerer had slain
them all. Three high walls surrounded the
castle, and many had scaled the first of these,
but none had ever returned alive. But Scul-
loge was not to be daunted, and, taking from
his father-in-law a black steed, he set out for
the fortress of Fiach O'Duda. Over the first
high wall nimbly leaped the magic horse, and
Sculloge called aloud on the Druid to come out
and surrender his sword. Then came out a
188

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

tall, dark man, with coal-black eyes and hair and
melancholy visage, and made a furious sweep
at Sculloge with the naming blade. But the
Druidic beast sprang back over the wall in the
twinkling of an eye and rescued his rider, leav-
ing, however, his tail behind in the courtyard.
Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his
father-in-law's palace, and the night was spent
in feasting and revelry.

Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse,
and when he got to Fiach's castle, he saw the
first wall lying in rubbish. He leaped the
second, and the same scene occurred as the day
before, save that the horse escaped unharmed.

The third day Sculloge went out on foot,
with a harp like that of Orpheus in his hand,
and as he swept its strings the grass bent to
listen and the trees bowed their heads. The
castle walls all lay in ruins, and Sculloge made
his way unhindered to the upper room, where
Fiach lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp.
He seized the sword of light, which was hung by
the chimney sheathed in a dark scabbard, and
making the best of his way back to the good
king's palace, mounted his wife's steed, and
scoured over land and sea until he found him-
self in the gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht
was still crying and cursing and betting on his
left hand against his right.

" Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword
189

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

of light ! " shouted Sculloge in tones of thun-
der ; and as he drew it from its sheath the whole
valley was lighted up as with the morning sun,
and next moment the head of the wretched
Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet wife,
who had come to meet him, was laughing and
crying in his arms.

November, 1870.

190

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

THE theory of mythology set forth in
the four preceding papers, and illus-
trated by the examination of numerous
myths relating to the lightning, the storm-wind,
the clouds, and the sunlight, was originally
framed with reference solely to the mythic
and legendary lore of the Aryan world. The
phonetic identity of the names of many West-
ern gods and heroes with the names of those
Vedic divinities which are obviously the person-
ifications of natural phenomena, suggested the
theory which philosophical considerations had
already foreshadowed in the works of Hume
arid Comte, and which the exhaustive analysis
of Greek, Hindu, Keltic, and Teutonic legends
has amply confirmed. Let us now, before pro-
ceeding to the consideration of barbaric folk-
lore, briefly recapitulate the results obtained by
modern scholarship working strictly within the
limits of the Aryan domain.

In the first place, it has been proved once for
all that the languages spoken by the Hindus,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Slaves, and
191

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Teutons are all descended from a single ances-
tral language, the old Aryan, in the same sense
that French, Italian, and Spanish are descended
from the Latin. And from this undisputed fact
it is an inevitable inference that these various
races contain, along with other elements, a race
element in common, due to their Aryan pedi-
gree. That the Indo-European races are wholly
Aryan is very improbable, for in every case the
countries overrun by them were occupied by in-
ferior races, whose blood must have mingled in
varying degrees with that of their conquerors ;
but that every Indo-European people is in great
part descended from a common Aryan stock is
not open to question.

In the second place, along with a common
fund of moral and religious ideas and of legal
and ceremonial observances, we find these kin-
dred peoples possessed of a common fund of
myths, superstitions, proverbs, popular poetry,
and household legends. The Hindu mother
amuses her child with fairy-tales which often
correspond, even in minor incidents, with stories
in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries ; and she
tells them in words which are phonetically akin
to words in Swedish and Gaelic. No doubt
many of these stories might have been devised
in a dozen different places independently of each
other ; and no doubt many of them have been
transmitted laterally from one people to ano*ther ;
192

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

but a careful examination shows that such can-
not have been the case with the great majority
of legends and beliefs. The agreement between
two such stories, for instance, as those of Faith-
ful John and Rama and Luxman is so close as
to make it incredible that they should have been
independently fabricated, while the points of
difference are so important as to make it ex-
tremely improbable that the one was ever copied
from the other. Besides which, the essential
identity of such myths as those of Sigurd and
Theseus, or of Helena and Sarama, carries us
back historically to a time when the scattered
Indo-European tribes had not yet begun to
hold commercial and intellectual intercourse
with each other, and consequently could not
have interchanged their epic materials or their
household stories. We are therefore driven to
the conclusion — which, startling as it may
seem, is after all the most natural and plausible
one that can be stated — that the Aryan nations,
which have inherited from a common ancestral
stock their languages and their customs, have
inherited also from the same common original
their fireside legends. They have preserved
Cinderella and Punchkin just as they have pre-
served the words for father and mother ', ten and
twenty ; and the former case, though more im-
posing to the imagination, is scientifically no
less intelligible than the latter.
193

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Thirdly, it has been shown that these vener-
able tales may be grouped in a few pretty well
denned classes ; and that the archetypal myth
of each class — the primitive story in conform-
ity to which countless subsequent tales have
been generated — was originally a mere descrip-
tion of physical phenomena, couched in the
poetic diction of an age when everything was
personified, because all natural phenomena were
supposed to be due to the direct workings of a
volition like that of which men were conscious
within themselves. Thus we are led to the
striking conclusion that mythology has had a
common root, both with science and with reli-
gious philosophy. The myth of Indra conquer-
ing Vritra was one of the theorems of primitive
Aryan science ; it was a provisional explanation
of the thunderstorm, satisfactory enough until
extended observation and reflection supplied a
better one. It also contained the germs of a
theology ; for the life-giving solar light fur-
nished an important part of the primeval con-
ception of deity. And finally, it became the
fruitful parent of countless myths, whether em-
bodied in the stately epics of Homer and the
bards of the Nibelungenlied, or in the humbler
legends of St. George and William Tell and the
ubiquitous Boots.

Such is the theory which was suggested half
a century ago by the researches of Jacob Grimm,.
194

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

and which, so far as concerns the mythology of
the Aryan race, is now victorious along the
whole line. It remains for us to test the uni-
versality of the general principles upon which it
is founded, by a brief analysis of sundry legends
and superstitions of the barbaric world. Since
the fetichistic habit of explaining the outward
phenomena of nature after the analogy of the
inward phenomena of conscious intelligence is
not a habit peculiar to our Aryan ancestors, but
is, as psychology shows, the inevitable result of
the conditions under which uncivilized think-
ing proceeds, we may expect to find the bar-
baric mind personifying the powers of nature
and making myths about their operations the
whole world over. And we need not be sur-
prised if we find in the resulting mythologic
structures a strong resemblance to the familiar
creations of the Aryan intelligence. In point
of fact, we shall often be called upon to note
such resemblance ; and it accordingly behooves
us at the outset to inquire how far a similarity
between mythical tales shall be taken as evi-
dence of a common traditional origin, and how
far it may be interpreted as due merely to the
similar workings of the untrained intelligence
in all ages and countries.

Analogies drawn from the comparison of lan-
guages will here be of service to us, if used dis-
creetly ; otherwise they are likely to bewilder

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

far more than to enlighten us. A theorem which
Max Miiller has laid down for our guidance in
this kind of investigation furnishes us with an
excellent example of the tricks which a super-
ficial analogy may play even with the trained
scholar, when temporarily off his guard. Actu-
ated by a praiseworthy desire to raise the study
of myths to something like the high level of
scientific accuracy already attained by the study
of words, Max Miiller endeavours to introduce
one of the most useful canons of philology into
a department of inquiry where its introduction
could only work the most hopeless confusion.
One of the earliest lessons to be learned by the
scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness
of comparing together directly the words con-
tained in derivative languages. For example,
you might set the English twelve side by side
with the Latin duodfdm, and then stare at the
two words to all eternity without any hope of
reaching a conclusion, good or bad, about either
of them : least of all would you suspect that
they are descended from the same radical.
But if you take each word by itself and trace it
back to its primitive shape, explaining every
change of every letter as you go, you will at
last reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the
parent of both these strangely metamorphosed
words.1 Nor will it do, on the other hand, to
1 For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on « « The Gen-
196

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

trust to verbal similarity without a historical in-
quiry into the origin of such similarity. Even
in the same language two words of quite differ-
ent origin may get their corners rubbed off till
they look as like one another as two pebbles.
The French words souris, a "mouse," and
souris, a " smile," are spelled exactly alike ; but
the one comes from Latin sorex and the other
from Latin subridere.

Now Max Miiller tells us that this principle,
which is indispensable in the study of words, is
equally indispensable in the study of myths.1
That is, you must not rashly pronounce the
Norse story of the Heartless Giant identical
with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although
the two correspond in every essential incident.
In both legends a magician turns several mem-
bers of the same family into stone ; the young-
est member of the family comes to the rescue,
and on the way saves the lives of sundry grate-
ful beasts ; arrived at the magician's castle, he
finds a captive princess ready to accept his love
and to play the part of Delilah to the en-
chanter. . In both stories the enchanter's life
depends on the integrity of something which is
elaborately hidden in a far-distant island, but
which the fortunate youth, instructed by the

esis of Language," North American Review, October, 1869,
p. 320.

1 Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii. p. 246.
197

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

artful princess and assisted by his menagerie of
grateful beasts, succeeds in obtaining. In both
stories the youth uses his advantage to free all
his friends from their enchantment, and then
proceeds to destroy the villain who wrought all
this wickedness. Yet, in spite of this agreement,
Max Miiller, if I understand him aright, would
not have us infer the identity of the two stories
until we have taken each one separately and
ascertained its primitive mythical significance.
Otherwise, for aught we can tell, the resem-
blance may be purely accidental, like that of the
French words for " mouse " and " smile."

A little reflection, however, will relieve us
from this perplexity, and assure us that the
alleged analogy between the comparison of words
and the comparison of stories is utterly superfi-
cial. The transformations of words — which are
often astounding enough — depend upon a few
well-established physiological principles of ut-
terance ; and since philology has learned to rely
upon these principles, it has become nearly as
sure in its methods and results as one of the so-
called " exact sciences." Folly enough is doubt-
less committed within its precincts by writers
who venture there without the laborious prepa-
ration which this science, more than almost any
other, demands. But the proceedings of the
trained philologist are no more arbitrary than
those of the trained astronomer. And though

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

the former may seem to be straining at a gnat
and swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you
that violin and fiddle are the same word, while
English care and Latin cura have nothing to do
with each other, he is nevertheless no more in-
dulging in guess-work than the astronomer who
confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of
Venus while asserting his knowledge of the ex-
istence of hydrogen in the atmosphere of Sirius.
To cite one example out of a hundred, every
philologist knows that s may become r, and that
the broad 0-sound may dwindle into the closer
0-sound ; but when you adduce some plausible
etymology based on the assumption that r has
changed into s, or o into a, apart from the de-
monstrable influence of some adjacent letter,
the philologist will shake his head.

Now in the study of stories there are no such
simple rules all cut and dried for us to go by.
There is no uniform psychological principle
which determines that the three-headed snake
in one story shall become a three-headed man
in the next. There is no Grimm's law in my-
thology which decides that a Hindu magician
shall always correspond to a Norwegian Troll
or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of
ideas are not so simple in application as the laws
of utterance. In short, the study of myths,
though it can be made sufficiently scientific in
its methods and results, does not constitute a
199

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

science by itself, like philology. It stands on
a footing similar to that occupied by physical
geography, or what the Germans call " earth-
knowledge." No one denies that all the changes
going on over the earth's surface conform to
physical laws ; but then no one pretends that
there is any single proximate principle which
governs all the phenomena of rainfall, of soil-
crumbling, of magnetic variation, and of the
distribution of plants and animals. All these
things are explained by principles obtained from
the various sciences of physics, chemistry, geo-
logy, and physiology. And in just the same way
the development and distribution of stories is
explained by the help of divers resources con-
tributed by philology, psychology, and history.
There is therefore no real analogy between the
cases cited by Max Miiller. Two unrelated
words may be ground into exactly the same
shape, just as a pebble from the North Sea
may be undistinguishable from another pebble
on the beach of the Adriatic ; but two stories
like those of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant
are no more likely to arise independently of
each other than two coral reefs on opposite
sides of the globe are likely to develop into
exactly similar islands.

Shall we then say boldly that close similar-
ity between legends is proof of kinship, and go
our way without further misgivings ? Unfortu-
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MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

nately we cannot dispose of the matter in quite
so summary a fashion ; for it remains to decide
what kind and degree of similarity shall be con-
sidered satisfactory evidence of kinship. And
it is just here that doctors may disagree. Here
is the point at which our " science " betrays its
weakness as compared with the sister study of
philology. Before we can decide with confi-
dence in any case, a great mass of evidence
must be brought into court. So long as we
remained on Aryan ground, all went smoothly
enough, because all the external evidence was
in our favour. We knew at the outset that the
Aryans inherit a common language and a com-
mon civilization, and therefore we found no
difficulty in accepting the conclusion that they
have inherited, among other things, a common
stock of legends. In the barbaric world it is
quite otherwise. Philology does not pronounce
in favour of a common origin for all barbaric
culture, such as it is. The notion of a single
primitive language, standing in the same rela-
tion to all existing dialects as the relation of
old Aryan to Latin and English, or that of old
Semitic to Hebrew and Arabic, was a notion
suited only to the infancy of linguistic science.
As the case now stands, it is certain that all the
languages actually existing cannot be referred
to a common ancestor, and it is altogether prob-
able that there never was any such common
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MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ancestor. I am not now referring to the ques-
tion of the unity of the human race. That
question lies entirely outside the sphere of phi-
lology. The science of language has nothing
to do with skulls or complexions, and no com-
parison of words can tell us whether the black
men are brethren of the white men, or whether
yellow and red men have a common pedigree :
these questions belong to comparative physio-
logy. But the science of language can and does
tell us that a certain amount of civilization is
requisite for the production of a language suf-
ficiently durable and widespread to give birth
to numerous mutually resembling offspring.
Barbaric languages are neither widespread nor
durable. Among savages each little group of
families has its own dialect, and coins its own ex-
pressions at pleasure ; and in the course of two
or three generations a dialect gets so strangely
altered as virtually to lose its identity. Even
numerals and personal pronouns, which the
Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries, get lost
every few years in Polynesia. Since the time
of Captain Cook the Tahitian language has
thrown away five out of its ten simple numer-
als, and replaced them by brand-new ones ; and
on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent com-
mand of some Indian dialect, and then, coming
back after twenty years, find yourself worse off
than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all

202

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

antiquated and useless. How absurd, therefore,
to suppose that primeval savages originated a
language which has held its own like the old
Aryan, and become the prolific mother of the
three or four thousand dialects now in exist-
ence ! Before a durable language can arise,
there must be an aggregation of numerous
tribes into a people, so that there may be need
of communication on a large scale, and so that
tradition may be strengthened. Wherever man-
kind have associated in nations, permanent lan-
guages have arisen, and their derivative dialects
bear the conspicuous marks of kinship ; but
where mankind have remained in their primi-
tive savage isolation, their languages have re-
mained sporadic and transitory, incapable of
organic development, and showing no traces of
a kinship which never existed.

The bearing of these considerations upon the
origin and diffusion of barbaric myths is obvi-
ous. The development of a common stock of
legends is, of course, impossible, save where
there is a common language ; and thus philo-
logy pronounces against the kinship of barbaric
myths with each other and with similar myths
of the Aryan and Semitic worlds. Similar stories
told in Greece and Norway are likely to have a
common pedigree, because the persons who have
preserved them in recollection speak a common
language and have inherited the same civiliza-
203

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

tion. But similar stories told in Labrador and
South Africa are not likely to be genealogically
related, because it is altogether probable that the
Esquimaux and the Zulu had acquired their
present race characteristics before either of them
possessed a language or a culture sufficient for
the production of myths. According to the na-
ture and extent of the similarity, it must be
decided whether such stories have been carried
about from one part of the world to another,
or have been independently originated in many
different places.

Here the methods of philology suggest a rule
which will often be found useful. In compar-
ing the vocabularies of different languages, those
words which directly imitate natural sounds —
such as whiz, crash, crackle — are not admitted
as evidence of kinship between the languages in
which they occur. Resemblances between such
words are obviously no proof of a common
ancestry ; and they are often met with in lan-
guages which have demonstrably had no connec-
tion with each other. So in mythology, where
we find two stories of which the primitive char-
acter is perfectly transparent, we need have no
difficulty in supposing them to have originated
independently. The myth of Jack and his
Bean-Stalk is found all over the world ; but the
idea of a country above the sky, to which per-

204

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

sons might gain access by climbing, is one which
could hardly fail to occur to every barbarian.
Among the American tribes, as well as among
the Aryans, the rainbow and the Milky Way
have contributed the idea of a Bridge of the
Dead, over which souls must pass on the way
to the other world. In South Africa, as well
as in Germany, the habits of the fox and of
his brother the jackal have given rise to fables
in which brute force is overcome by cunning.
In many parts of the world we find curiously
similar stories devised to account for the
stumpy tails of the bear and hyaena, the hair-
less tail of the rat, and the blindness of the
mole. And in all countries may be found the
beliefs that men may be changed into beasts, or
plants, or stones ; that the sun is in some way
tethered or constrained to follow a certain
course ; that the storm-cloud is a ravenous
dragon ; and that there are talismans which will
reveal hidden treasures. All these conceptions
are so obvious to the uncivilized intelligence
that stories founded upon them need not be
supposed to have a common origin, unless there
turns out to be a striking similarity among their
minor details. On the other hand, the numer-
ous myths of an all-destroying deluge have
doubtless arisen partly from reminiscences of
actually occurring local inundations, and partly

205

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

from the fact that the Scriptural account of a
deluge has been carried all over the world by
Catholic and Protestant missionaries.1

By way of illustrating these principles, let us
now cite a few of the American myths so care-
fully collected by Dr. Brinton in his admirable
treatise. We shall not find in the mythology
of the New World the wealth of wit and im-
agination which has so long delighted us in the
stories of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd,
and Indra. The mythic lore of the American
Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as
befits the product of a lower grade of culture
and a more meagre intellect. Not only are
the personages less characteristically portrayed,
but there is a continual tendency to extrava-
gance, the sure index of an inferior imagination.
Nevertheless, after making due allowances for
differences in the artistic method of treatment,
there is between the mythologies of the Old and
the New Worlds a fundamental resemblance.
We come upon solar myths and myths of the
storm curiously blended with culture myths, as
in the cases of Hermes, Prometheus, and Kad-
mos. The American parallels to these are to
be found in the stories of Michabo, Viracocha,
loskeha, and Quetzalcoatl. " As elsewhere the
world over, so in America, many tribes had

1 For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould, Le-
gends of the Patriarchs and Prophets t pp. 85-106.
206

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

to tell of ... an august character, who taught
them what they knew, — the tillage of the soil,
the properties of plants, the art of picture-writ-
ing, the secrets of magic ; who founded their
institutions and established their religions ; who
governed them long with glory abroad and peace
at home ; and finally did not die, but, like Fred-
eric Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and
all great heroes, vanished mysteriously, and still
lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to
return to his beloved people and lead them to
victory and happiness." 1 Every one is familiar
with the numerous legends of white-skinned,
full-bearded heroes, like the mild Quetzalcoatl,
who in times long previous to Columbus came
from the far East to impart the rudiments of
civilization and religion to the red men. By
those who first heard these stories they were
supposed, with naive Euhemerism, to refer to
pre-Columbian visits of Europeans to this con-
tinent, like that of the Northmen in the tenth
century. But a scientific study of the subject
has dissipated such notions. These legends are
far too numerous, they are too similar to each
other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to
admit of any such interpretation. By comparing
them carefully with each other, and with corre-
lative myths of the Old World, their true char-
acter soon becomes apparent.

1 Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 1 60.
207

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

One of the most widely famous of these cul-
ture heroes was Manabozho or Michabo, the
Great Hare. With entire unanimity, says Dr.
Brinton, the various branches of the Algonquin
race, " the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni
Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of
New England, the Ottawas of the far North,
and the Western tribes, perhaps without excep-
tion, spoke of ' this chimerical beast,' as one of
the old missionaries calls it, as their common
ancestor. The totem, or clan, which bore his
name was looked up to with peculiar respect."
Not only was Michabo the ruler and guardian
of these numerous tribes, — he was the founder
of their religious rites, the inventor of picture-
writing, the ruler of the weather, the creator and
preserver of earth and heaven. " From a grain
of sand brought from the bottom of the prime-
val ocean he fashioned the habitable land, and
set it floating on the waters till it grew to such a
size that a strong young wolf, running constantly,
died of old age ere he reached its limits." He
was also, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter. " One
of his footsteps measured eight leagues, the
Great Lakes were the beaver dams he built,
and when the cataracts impeded his progress he
tore them away with his hands." " Sometimes
he was said to dwell in the skies with his bro-
ther, the Snow, or, like many great spirits, to

208

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

have built his wigwam in the far North on some
floe of ice in the Arctic Ocean. . . . But in
the oldest accounts of the missionaries he was
alleged to reside toward the East ; and in the
holy formulae of the meda craft, when the winds
are invoked to the medicine lodge, the East is
summoned in his name, the door opens in that
direction, and there, at the edge of the earth
where the sun rises, on the shore of the infinite
ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house,
and sends the luminaries forth on their daily
journeys." * From such accounts as this we see
that Michabo was no more a wise instructor
and legislator than Minos or Kadmos. Like
these heroes, he is a personification of the solar
life-giving power, which daily comes forth from
its home in the east, making the earth to re-
joice. The etymology of his name confirms the
otherwise clear indications of the legend itself.
It is compounded of michi, " great," and wabos,
which means alike " hare " and "white." " Dia-
lectic forms in Algonquin for white are wabi ,
wape, wampiy etc. ; for morning, wapan, wa-
panch, opah ; for east, wapa, wanbun, etc. ; for
day, wompan, oppan ; for light, oppung." So that
Michabo is the Great White One, the God of
the Dawn and the East. And the etymological
confusion, by virtue of which he acquired his
1 Brinton, op. fit. p. 163.

209

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

sobriquet of the Great Hare, affords a curious
parallel to what has often happened in Aryan
and Semitic mythology, as we saw when dis-
cussing the subject of werewolves.

Keeping in mind this solar character of Mi-
chabo, let us note how full of meaning are the
myths concerning him. In the first cycle of
these legends, " he is grandson of the Moon,
his father is the West Wind, and his mother, a
maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment
of conception. For the Moon is the goddess
of night ; the Dawn is her daughter, who brings
forth the Morning, and perishes herself in the
act ; and the West, the spirit of darkness, as
the East is of light, precedes, and as it were
begets the latter, as the evening does the morn-
ing. Straightway, however, continues the legend,
the son sought the unnatural father to revenge
the death of his mother, and then commenced
a long and desperate struggle. It began on
the mountains. The West was forced to give
ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers
and over mountains and lakes, and at last he
came to the brink of this world. ' Hold,' cried
he, f my son, you know my power, and that it
is impossible to kill me.' What is this but the
diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried
on from what time f the jocund morn stands
tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops,' across the
wide world to the sunset, the struggle that
210

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

knows no end, for both the opponents are im-
mortal ? " 1

Even the Veda nowhere affords a more trans-
parent narrative than this. The Iroquois tradi-
tion is very similar. In it appear twin brothers,2
born of a virgin mother, daughter of the Moon,
who died in giving them life. Their names,
loskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida
dialect the White One and the Dark One.
Under the influence of Christian ideas the con-
test between the brothers has been made to as-
sume a moral character, like the strife between
Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such intention
appears in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton
has shown that none of the American tribes had
any conception of a Devil. When the quarrel
came to blows, the dark brother was signally
discomfited ; and the victorious loskeha, return-
ing to his grandmother, " established his lodge
in the far East, on the borders of the Great
Ocean, whence the sun comes. In time he be-
came the father of mankind, and special guar-
dian of the Iroquois." He caused the earth to
bring forth, he stocked the woods with game,
and taught his children the use of fire. " He it
was who watched and watered their crops ; f and,

1 Brinton, op, cit. p. 167.

2 Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the
Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse
mythology.

211

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

indeed, without his aid,' says the old mission-
ary, quite out of patience with their puerilities,
f they think they could not boil a pot.' " There
was more in it than poor Brebeuf thought, as
we are forcibly reminded by recent discoveries
in physical science. Even civilized men would
find it difficult to boil a pot without the aid
of solar energy. Call him what we will, —
loskeha, Michabo, or Phoibos, — the benefi-
cent Sun is the master and sustainer of us all ;
and if we were to relapse into heathenism, like
Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not
do better than to select him as our chief object
of worship.

The same principles by which these simple
cases are explained furnish also the key to the
more complicated mythology of Mexico and
Peru. Like the deities just discussed, Vira-
cocha, the supreme god of the Quichuas, rises
from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys
westward, slaying with his lightnings the crea-
tures who oppose him, until he finally disap-
pears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite,
he bears in his name the evidence of his origin,
Viracocha signifying " foam of the sea ; " and
hence the " White One " (I ' aube]^ the god of
light rising white on the horizon, like the foam
on the surface of the waves. The Aymaras
spoke of their original ancestors as white ; and
to this day, as Dr. Brinton informs us, the Peru-
212

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

vians call a white man Viracocha. The myth
of Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same charac-
ter. All these solar heroes present in most of
their qualities and achievements a striking like-
ness to those of the Old World. They com-
bine the attributes of Apollo, Herakles, and
Hermes. Like Herakles, they journey from
east to west, smiting the powers of darkness,
storm, and winter with the thunderbolts of
Zeus or the unerring arrows of Phoibos, and
sinking in a blaze of glory on the western verge
of the world, where the waves meet the fir-
mament. Or like Hermes, in a second cycle
of legends, they rise with the soft breezes of a
summer morning, driving before them the bright
celestial cattle whose udders are heavy with re-
freshing rain, fanning the flames which devour
the forests, blustering at the doors of wigwams,
and escaping with weird laughter through vents
and crevices. The white skins and flowing beards
of these American heroes may be aptly com-
pared to the fair faces and long golden locks of
their Hellenic compeers. Yellow hair was in all
probability as rare in Greece as a full beard in
Peru or Mexico ; but in each case the descrip-
tion suits the solar character of the hero. One
important class of incidents, however, is appar-
ently quite absent from the American legends.
We frequently see the Dawn described as a vir-
gin mother who dies in giving birth to the Day ;
213

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

but nowhere do we remember seeing her pic-
tured as a lovely or valiant or crafty maiden,
ardently wooed, but speedily forsaken by her
solar lover. Perhaps in no respect is the supe-
rior richness and beauty of the Aryan myths
more manifest than in this. Brynhild, Urvasi,
Medeia, Ariadne, Oinone, and countless other
kindred heroines, with their brilliant legends,
could not be spared from the mythology of our
ancestors without leaving it meagre indeed.
These were the materials which Kalidasa, the
Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibe-
lungen found ready, awaiting their artistic treat-
ment. But the mythology of the New World,
with all its pretty and agreeable naivet'e, affords
hardly enough, either of variety in situation or
of complexity in motive, for a grand epic or a
genuine tragedy.

But little reflection is needed to assure us
that the imagination of the barbarian, who either
carries away his wife by brute force or buys
her from her relatives as he would buy a cow,
could never have originated legends in which
maidens are lovingly solicited, or in which their
favour is won by the performance of deeds of
valour. These stories owe their existence to the
romantic turn of mind which has always char-
acterized the Aryan, whose civilization, even in
the times before the dispersion of his race, was
sufficiently advanced to allow of his entertain-
214

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

ing such comparatively exalted conceptions of
the relations between men and women. The
absence of these myths from barbaric folk-lore
is, therefore, just what might be expected ; but
it is a fact which militates against any possible
hypothesis of the common origin of Aryan and
barbaric mythology. If there were any genetic
relationship between Sigurd and loskeha, be-
tween Herakles and Michabo, it would be hard
to tell why Brynhild and lole should have dis-
appeared entirely from one whole group of le-
gends, while retained, in some form or other,
throughout the whole of the other group. On
the other hand, the resemblances above noticed
between Aryan and American mythology fall
very far short of the resemblances between the
stories told in different parts of the Aryan do-
main. No barbaric legend, of genuine barbaric
growth, has yet been cited which resembles any
Aryan legend as the story of Punchkin resembles
the story of the Heartless Giant. The myths of
Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to
speak, of natural phenomena, just as imitative
words are direct copies of natural sounds.
Neither the Redskin nor the Indo-European
had any choice as to the main features of the
career of his solar divinity. He must be born
of the Night, — or of the Dawn, — must travel
westward, must slay harassing demons. Elim-
inating these points of likeness, the resemblance
215

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

between the Aryan and barbaric legends is at
once at an end. Such an identity in point of
details as that between the wooden horse which
enters I lion, and the horse which bears Sigurd
into the place where Brynhild is imprisoned,
and the Druidic steed which leaps with Scul-
loge over the walls of Fiach's enchanted castle,
is, I believe, nowhere to be found after we leave
Indo-European territory.

Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while
the legends of the Aryan and the non-Aryan
worlds contain common mythical elements, the
legends themselves are not of common origin.
The fact that certain mythical ideas are pos-
sessed alike by different races shows that in
each case a similar human intelligence has been
at work explaining similar phenomena ; but in
order to prove a family relationship between the
culture of these different races we need some-
thing more than this. We need to prove not
only a community of mythical ideas, but also a
community between the stories based upon these
ideas. We must show not only that Michabo
is like Herakles in those striking features which
the contemplation of solar phenomena would
necessarily suggest to the imagination of the
primitive myth-maker, but also that the two
characters are similarly conceived, and that the
two careers agree in seemingly arbitrary points
of detail, as is the case in the stories of Punchkin
216

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact that
solar heroes, all over the world, travel in a cer-
tain path and slay imps of darkness is of great
value as throwing light upon primeval habits
of thought, but it is of no value as evidence for
or against an alleged community of civilization
between different races. The same is true of
the sacredness universally attached to certain
numbers. Dr. Brinton's opinion that the sanc-
tity of the number four in nearly all systems of
mythology is due to a primitive worship of the
cardinal points, becomes very probable when
we recollect that the similar preeminence of
seven is almost demonstrably connected with
the adoration of the sun, moon, and five visible
planets, which has left its record in the structure
and nomenclature of the Aryan and Semitic
week.1

In view of these considerations, the compari-
son of barbaric myths with each other and with
the legends of the Aryan world becomes doubly
interesting, as illustrating the similarity in the
workings of the untrained intelligence the world
over. In our first paper we saw how the moon-

1 See Humboldt's Kosmos, torn. iii. pp. 469-476. A
fetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not always been
absent from the minds of persons instructed in a higher theo-
logy ; as witness a well-known passage in Irenasus, and also
the custom, well-nigh universal in Europe, of building Chris-
tian churches in a line east and west.
2I7

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

spots have been variously explained by Indo-
Europeans, as a man with a thorn-bush or as
two children bearing a bucket of water on a
pole. In Ceylon it is said that as Sakyamuni
was one day wandering half starved in the for-
est, a pious hare met him, and offered itself to
him to be slain and cooked for dinner; where-
upon the holy Buddha set it on high in the
moon, that future generations of men might see
it and marvel at its piety. In the Samoan Is-
lands these dark patches are supposed to be por-
tions of a woman's figure. A certain woman
was once hammering something with a mallet,
when the moon arose, looking so much like a
breadfruit that the woman asked it to come
down and let her child eat off a piece of it ;
but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled
up woman, mallet, and child, and there, in the
moon's belly, you may still behold them. Ac-
cording to the Hottentots, the Moon once sent
the Hare to inform men that as she died away
and rose again, so should men die and again
come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot the
purport of the message, and, coming down to
the earth, proclaimed it far and wide that though
the Moon was invariably resuscitated whenever
she died, mankind, on the other hand, should
die and go to the Devil. When the silly brute
returned to the lunar country and told what he
had done, the Moon was so angry that she took
218

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

up an axe and aimed a blow at his head to split
it. But the axe missed and only cut his lip
open ; and that was the origin of the " hare-
lip." Maddened by the pain and the insult,
the Hare flew at the Moon and almost scratched
her eyes out ; and to this day she bears on her
face the marks of the Hare's claws.1

Again, every reader of the classics knows how
Selene cast Endymion into a profound slumber
because he refused her love, and how at sun-
down she used to come and stand above him on
the Latmian hill, and watch him as he lay asleep
on the marble steps of a temple half hidden
among drooping elm-trees, over which clam-
bered vines heavy with dark blue grapes. This
represents the rising moon looking down on
the setting sun ; in Labrador a similar phenom-
enon has suggested a somewhat different story.
Among the Esquimaux the Sun is a maiden and
the Moon is her brother, who is overcome by
a wicked passion for her. Once, as this girl was
at a dancing-party in a friend's hut, some one
came up and took hold of her by the shoulders
and shook her, which is (according to the le-
gend) the Esquimaux manner of declaring one's
love. She could not tell who it was in the dark,
and so she dipped her hand in some soot and

1 Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare
the Fiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the
Rat, in Tylor, Primitive Cu/ture, i. 321.
219

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

smeared one of his cheeks with it. When a
light was struck in the hut, she saw, to her dis-
may, that it was her brother, and, without wait-
ing to learn any more, she took to her heels.
He started in hot pursuit, and so they ran till
they got to the end of the world, — the jump-
ing-off place, — when they both jumped into
the sky. There the Moon still chases his sis-
ter, the Sun ; and every now and then he turns
his sooty cheek toward the earth, when he be-
comes so dark that you cannot see him.1

Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor,
shows that Malays, as well as Indo-Europeans,
have conceived of the clouds as swan-maidens.
In the island of Celebes it is said that "seven
heavenly nymphs came down from the sky to
bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who
thought first that they were white doves, but in
the bath he saw that they were women. Then
he stole one of the thin robes that gave the
nymphs their power of flying, and so he caught
Utahagi, the one whose robe he had stolen, and
took her for his wife, and she bore him a son.
Now she was called Utahagi from a single white
hair she had, which was endowed with magic
power, and this hair her husband pulled out.
As soon as he had done it, there arose a great
storm, and Utahagi went up to heaven. The
child cried for its mother, and Kasimbaha was
1 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.
220

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

in great grief, and cast about how he should fol-
low Utahagi up into the sky." Here we pass to
the myth of Jack and the Bean-Stalk. " A rat
gnawed the thorns off the rattans, and Kasim-
baha clambered up by them with his son upon
his back, till he came to heaven. There a little
bird showed him the house of Utahagi, and after
various adventures he took up his abode among
the gods." l

In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens,
which also reminds us of the story of the Heart-
less Giant. A certain Samojed once went out to
catch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming
in a lake surrounded by gloomy pine-trees, while
their feather dresses lay on the shore. He crept
up and stole one of these dresses, and by and by
the swan-maiden came to him shivering with
cold and promising to become his wife if he
would only give her back her garment of feath-
ers. The ungallant fellow, however, did not
care for a wife, but a little revenge was not un-
suited to his way of thinking. There were seven
robbers who used to prowl about the neighbour-
hood, and who, When they got home, finding
their hearts in the way, used to hang them up
on some pegs in the tent. One of these rob-
bers had killed the Samojed's mother ; and so
he promised to return the swan-maiden's dress
after she should have procured for him these

1 Tylor, op. cit. p.. 346.
221

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

seven hearts. So she stole the hearts, and the
Samojed smashed six of them, and then woke
up the seventh robber, and told him to restore
his mother to life, on pain of instant death.
Then the robber produced a purse containing
the old woman's soul, and going to the grave-
yard shook it over her bones, and she revived at
once. Then the Samojed smashed the seventh
heart, and the robber died; and so the swan-
maiden got back her plumage and flew away
rejoicing.1

Swan-maidens are also, according to Mr.
Baring-Gould, found among the Minussinian
Tartars. But there they appear as foul demons,
like the Greek Harpies, who delight in drink-
ing the blood of men slain in battle. There are
forty of them, who darken the whole firmament
in their flight ; but sometimes they all coalesce
into one great black storm-fiend, who rages for
blood, like a werewolf.

In South Africa we find the werewolf him-
self.2 A certain Hottentot was once travelling
with a Bushwoman and her child, when they

1 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, ii. 299-302.

2 Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wal-
lace says : " It is universally believed in Lombock that some
men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which
they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many
strange tales are told of such transformations." Wallace,
Malay Archipelago, vol. i. p. 251.

222

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

perceived at a distance a troop of wild horses.
The man, being hungry, asked the woman to
turn herself into a lioness and catch one of these
horses, that they might eat of it; whereupon
the woman set down her child, and taking off a
sort of petticoat made of human skin became
instantly transformed into a lioness, which rushed
across the plain, struck down a wild horse and
lapped its blood. The man climbed a tree in
terror, and conjured his companion to resume
her natural shape. Then the lioness came back,
and putting on the skirt made of human skin
reappeared as a woman, and took up her child,
and the two friends resumed their journey after
making a meal of the horse's flesh.1

The werewolf also appears in North Amer-
ica, duly furnished with his wolfskin sack ; but
neither in America nor in Africa is he the gen-
uine European werewolf, inspired by a diabolic
frenzy, and ravening for human flesh. The bar-
baric myths testify to the belief that men can
be changed into beasts or have in some cases
descended from beast ancestors, but the applica-
tion of this belief to the explanation of abnormal
cannibal cravings seems to have been confined
to Europe. The werewolf of the Middle Ages
was not merely a transformed man, — he was
an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite,
due to the machinations of the Devil, showed
1 Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.
223

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

its power over his physical organism by chan-
ging the shape of it. The barbaric werewolf is
the product of a lower and simpler kind of
thinking. There is no diabolism about him;
for barbaric races, while believing in the exist-
ence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not
a sufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity to
form the conception of diabolism. And the can-
nibal craving, which to the mediaeval European
was a phenomenon so strange as to demand
a mythological explanation, would hot impress
the barbarian as either very exceptional or very
blameworthy.

In the folk-lore of the Zulus, one of the most
quick-witted and intelligent of African races, the
cannibal possesses many features in common
with the Scandinavian Troll, who also has a
liking for human flesh. As we saw in the pre-
ceding paper, the Troll has very likely derived
some of his characteristics from reminiscences
of the barbarous races who preceded the Aryans
in Central and Northern Europe. In like man-
ner the long-haired cannibal of Zulu nursery
literature, who is always represented as belong-
ing to a distinct race, has been supposed to
be explained by the existence of inferior races
conquered and displaced by the Zulus. Never-
theless, as Dr. Callaway observes, neither the
long-haired mountain cannibals of Western
Africa, nor the Fulahs, nor the tribes of Eghe-
224

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

dal described by Barth, " can be considered as
answering to the description of long-haired as
given in the Zulu legends of cannibals ; neither
could they possibly have formed their histor-
ical basis. . . . It is perfectly clear that the can-
nibals of the Zulu legends are not common
men ; they are magnified into giants and magi-
cians ; they are remarkably swift and enduring ;
fierce and terrible warriors." Very probably
they may have a mythical origin in modes of
thought akin to those which begot the Panis
of the Veda and the Northern Trolls. The
parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable one
which can be found in comparing barbaric with
Aryan folk-lore. Like the Panis and Trolls,
the cannibals are represented as the foes of the
solar hero Uthlakanyana, who is almost as great
a traveller as Odysseus, and whose presence of
mind amid trying circumstances is not to be
surpassed by that of the incomparable Boots.
Uthlakanyana is as precocious as Herakles or
Hermes. He speaks before he is born, and no
sooner has he entered the world than he be-
gins to outwit other people and get possession
of their property. He works bitter ruin for
the cannibals, who, with all their strength and
fleetness, are no better endowed with quick wit
than the Trolls, whom Boots invariably victim-
izes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana
fell in with a cannibal. Their greetings were
225

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS *

cordial enough, and they ate a bit of leopard
together, and began to build a house, and killed
a couple of cows, but the cannibal's cow was lean,
while Uthlakanyana' s was fat. Then the crafty
traveller, fearing that his companion might in-
sist upon having the fat cow, turned and said,
"c Let the house be thatched now; then we can
eat our meat. You see the sky, that we shall
get wet.' The cannibal said, c You are right,
child of my sister ; you are a man indeed in
saying, Let us thatch the house, for we shall get
wet.' Uthlakanyana said, * Do you do it then ;
I will go inside, and push the thatching needle
for you, in the house.' The cannibal went up.
His hair was very, very long. Uthlakanyana
went inside and pushed the needle for him.
He thatched in the hair of the cannibal, tying it
very tightly ; he knotted it into the thatch con-
stantly, taking it by separate locks and fasten-
ing it firmly, that it might be tightly fastened
to the house." Then the rogue went outside
and began to eat of the cow which was roasted.
" The cannibal said, f What are you about, child
of my sister ? Let us just finish the house ; after-
wards we can do that ; we will do it together.'
Uthlakanyana replied, ' Come down then. I
cannot go into the house any more. The
thatching is finished.' The cannibal assented.
When he thought he was going to quit the
house, he was unable to quit it. He cried out
226

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

saying, ' Child of my sister, how have you man-
aged your thatching ? ' Uthlakanyana said, * See
to it yourself. I have thatched well, for I shall
not have any dispute. Now I am about to eat
in peace ; I no longer dispute with anybody,
for I am now alone with my cow.' " So the can-
nibal cried and raved and appealed in vain to
Uthlakanyana's sense of justice, until by and
by " the sky came with hailstones and lightning.
Uthlakanyana took all the meat into the house ;
he stayed in the house and lit a fire. It hailed
and rained. The cannibal cried on the top of
the house ; he was struck with the hailstones,
and died there on the house. It cleared. Uthla-
kanyana went out and said, f Uncle, just come
down, and come to me. It has become clear.
It no longer rains, and there is no more hail,
neither is there any more lightning. Why are
you silent? ' So Uthlakanyana ate his cow alone,
until he had finished it. He then went on his
way." l

In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by
cannibals, and shut up in the rock Itshe-likan-
tunjambili, which, like the rock of the Forty
Thieves, opens and shuts at the command of
those who understand its secret. She gets pos-
session of the secret and escapes, and when the
monsters pursue her she throws on the ground
a calabash full of sesame, which they stop to eat.
1 Callaway, Zu/u Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.
227

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

At last, getting tired of running, she climbs a
tree, and there she finds her brother, who,
warned by a dream, has come out to look for
her. They ascend the tree together until they
come to a beautiful country well stocked with
fat oxen. They kill an ox, and while its flesh
is roasting they amuse themselves by making a
stout thong of its hide. By and by one of the
cannibals, smelling the cooking meat, comes to
the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers
the boy and girl in the sky country ! They
invite him up there to share in their feast, and
throw him an end of the thong by which to
climb up. When the cannibal is dangling mid-
way between earth and heaven, they let go the
rope, and down he falls with a terrible crash.1

In this story the enchanted rock opened by
a talismanic formula brings us again into con,
tact with Indo-European folk-lore. And that
the conception has in both cases been suggested
by the same natural phenomenon is rendered
probable by another Zulu tale, in which the
cannibal's cave is opened by a swallow which
flies in the air. Here we have the elements of
a genuine lightning-myth. We see that among
these African barbarians, as well as among our
own forefathers, the clouds have been conceived

1 Callaway, op. fit. pp. 142-152 ; cf. a similar story in
which the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7.
I omit the sequel of the tale.

228

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

as birds carrying the lightning which can cleave
the rocks. In America we find the same notion
prevalent. The Dakotahs explain the thunder
as " the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his
wings," and the Caribs describe the lightning
as a poisoned dart which the bird blows through
a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting.1
On the other hand, the Kamtchatkans know
nothing of a cloud-bird, but explain the light-
ning as something analogous to the flames of a
volcano. The Kamtchatkans say that when the
mountain goblins have got their stoves well
heated up, they throw overboard, with true bar-
baric shiftlessness, all the brands not needed for
immediate use, which makes a volcanic erup-
tion. So when it is summer on earth, it is win-
ter in heaven ; and the gods, after heating up
their stoves, throw away their spare kindling-
wood, which makes the lightning.2

When treating of Indo-European solar
myths, we saw the unvarying, unresting course
of the sun variously explained as due to the
subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the
anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the curse
laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric
mind has worked at the same problem ; but the ^
explanations which it has given are more child-
like and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth

1 Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.

2 Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.

229

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

tells how the Sun used to race through the sky
so fast that men could not get enough daylight
to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by
an inventive genius, named Maui, conceived the
idea of catching the Sun in a noose and mak-
ing him go more deliberately. He plaited ropes
and made a strong net, and, arming himself with
the jawbone of his ancestress, Muri-ranga-
whenua, called together all his brethren, and
they journeyed to the place where the Sun
rises, and there spread the net. When the Sun
came up, he stuck his head and fore paws into
the net, and while the brothers tightened the
ropes so that they cut him and made him scream
for mercy, Maui beat him with the jawbone
until he became so weak that ever since he has
only been able to crawl through the sky. Ac-
cording to another Polynesian myth, there was
once a grumbling Radical, who never could be
satisfied with the way in which things are man-
aged on this earth. This bold Radical set out
to build a stone house which should last foi»-
ever ; but the days were so short and the stones
so heavy that he despaired of ever accomplish-
ing his project. One night, as he lay awake
thinking the matter over, it occurred to him
that if he could catch the Sun in a net, he could
have as much daylight as was needful in order
to finish his house. So he borrowed a noose
from the god Itu, and, it being autumn, when
230

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

the Sun gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught
the luminary. The Sun cried till his tears made
a great freshet which nearly drowned the island ;
but it was of no use ; there he is tethered to
this day.

Similar stories are met with in North Amer-
ica. A Dog- Rib Indian once chased a squirrel
up a tree until he reached the sky. There he
set a snare for the squirrel and climbed down
again. Next day the Sun was caught in the
snare, and night came on at once. That is to
say, the sun was eclipsed. " Something wrong
up there," thought the Indian, " I must have
caught the Sun ; " and so he sent up ever so
many animals to release the captive. They were
all burned to ashes, but at last the mole, going
up and burrowing out through the ground of
the sky, (!) succeeded in gnawing asunder the
cords of the snare. Just as it thrust its head
out through the opening made in the sky-
ground, it received a flash of light which put
its eyes out, and that is why the mole is blind.
The Sun got away, but has ever since travelled
more deliberately.1

These sun-myths, many more of which are
to be found collected in Mr. Tylor's excellent
treatise on " The Early History of Mankind,"
well illustrate both the similarity and the di-
versity of the results obtained by the primitive

i Tylor, op. fit. pp. 338-343-

231

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

mind, in different times and countries, when
engaged upon similar problems. No one would
think of referring these stories to a common
traditional origin with the myths of Herakles
and Odysseus ; yet both classes of tales were
devised to explain the same phenomenon. Both
to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the stead-
fast but deliberate journey of the sun through
the firmament was a strange circumstance which
called for explanation ; but while the meagre
intelligence of the barbarian could only attain
to the quaint conception of a man throwing a
noose over the sun's head, the rich imagination
of the Indo-European created the noble picture
of Herakles doomed to serve the son of Sthene-
los, in accordance with the resistless decree of
fate.

^ Another world-wide myth, which shows how
similar are the mental habits of uncivilized men,
is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu notion
of a great tortoise that lies beneath the earth
and keeps it from falling is familiar to every
reader. According to one account, this tortoise,
swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth
on his back ; but by and by, when the gods
get ready to destroy mankind, the tortoise will
grow weary and sink under his load, and then
the earth will be overwhelmed by a deluge.
Another legend tells us that when the gods and
demons took Mount Mandara for a churning
232

MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

stick and churned the ocean to make ambrosia,
the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise
and lay at the bottom of the sea, as a pivot for
the whirling mountain to rest upon. But these
versions of the myth are not primitive. In the
original conception the world is itself a gigantic
tortoise swimming in a boundless ocean ; the
flat surface of the earth is the lower plate which
covers the reptile's belly; the rounded shell
which covers his back is the sky ; and the hu-
man race lives and moves and has its being
inside of the tortoise. Now, as Mr. Tylor has
pointed out, many tribes of Redskins hold sub-
stantially the same theory of the universe. They
regard the tortoise as the symbol of the world,
and address it as the mother of mankind. Once,
before the earth was made, the king of heaven
quarrelled with his wife, and gave her such a
terrible kick that she fell down into the sea.
Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back,
and proceeded to raise up the earth, upon which
the heavenly woman became the mother of
mankind. These first men had white faces, and
they used to dig in the ground to catch badgers.
One day a zealous burro wer thrust his knife too
far and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately
sank into the sea and drowned all the human
race save one man.1 In Finnish mythology the
world is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which

1 Tylor, op. cit. p. 336.
233

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the white part is the ocean, the yolk is the
earth, and the arched shell is the sky. In India
this is the mundane egg of Brahma ; and it
reappears among the Yorubas as a pair of cal-
abashes put together like oyster shells, one
making a dome over the other. In Zululand
the earth is a huge beast called Usilosimapundu,
whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very
large and broad and red : " in some countries
which were on his body it was winter, and in
others it was early harvest." Many broad riv-
ers flow over his back, and he is covered with
forests and hills, as is indicated in his name,
which means " the rugose or knotty-backed
beast." In this group of conceptions may be
seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish, which
lay still so long that sand and clay gradually
accumulated upon its back, and at last it be-
came covered with trees. And lastly, passing
from barbaric folk-lore and from the Arabian
Nights to the highest level of Indo-European
intelligence, do we not find both Plato and
Kepler amusing themselves with speculations
in which the earth figures as a stupendous
animal ?

November y 1870.

234

VI
JUVENTUS MUNDI1

TWELVE years ago, when, in conclud-
ing his " Studies on Homer and the
Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone ap-
plied to himself the warning addressed by Aga-
memnon to the priest of Apollo, " Let not
Nemesis catch me by the swift ships,

i) vvv BrjOvvovr', f) vorepov av#is tovra,"

he would seem to have intended it as a last
farewell to classical studies. Yet, whatever his
intentions may have been, they have yielded to
the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground, —
a desire as strong in the breast of the classical
scholar as was the yearning which led Odysseus
to reject the proffered gift of immortality, so
that he might but once more behold the
wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of his
native Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the
" Youth of the World," Mr. Gladstone dis-
cusses the same questions which were treated
in his earlier work ; and the main conclusions

1 Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic
Age. By the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Bos-
ton : Little, Brown & Co. 1869.

235

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

reached in the " Studies on Homer " are here
so little modified with reference to the recent
progress of archaeological inquiries that the book
can hardly be said to have had any other reason
for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the
ships of the Argives, and of returning thither
as often as possible.

The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his
new work is either a very appropriate one or a
strange misnomer, according to the point of
view from which it is regarded. Such being the
case, we might readily acquiesce in its use, and
pass it by without comment, trusting that the
author understood himself when he adopted it,
were it not that by incidental references, and
especially by his allusions to the legendary lit-
erature of the Jews, Mr. Gladstone shows that
he means more by the title than it can fairly
be made to express. An author who seeks to
determine prehistoric events by references to
Kadmos, and Danaos, and Abraham, is at once
liable to the suspicion of holding very inade-
quate views as to the character of the epoch which
may properly be termed the " youth of the
world." Often in reading Mr. Gladstone we are
reminded of Renan's strange suggestion that an
exploration of the Hindu Kush territory, whence
probably came the primitive Aryans, might
throw some new light on the origin of lan-
guage. Nothing could well be more futile. The
236

JUVENTUS MUNDI

primitive Aryan language has already been
partly reconstructed for us ; its grammatical
forms and syntactic devices are becoming famil-
iar to scholars ; one great philologist has even
composed a tale in it ; yet in studying this long-
buried dialect we are not much nearer the first
beginnings of human speech than in studying
the Greek of Homer, the Sanskrit of the Vedas,
or the Umbrian of the Iguvine Inscriptions.
The Aryan mother-tongue had passed into the
last of the three stages of linguistic growth long
before the break-up of the tribal communities
in Aryana-vaedjo, and at that early date pre-
sented a less primitive structure than is to be
seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of our
own times. So the state of society depicted in
the Homeric poems, and well illustrated by
Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees less primitive
than that which is revealed to us by the ar-
chaeological researches either of Pictet and Win-
dischmann, or of Tylor, Lubbock, and M'Len-
nan. We shall gather evidences of this as we
proceed. Meanwhile let us remember that at
least eleven thousand years before the Homeric
age men lived in communities, and manufac-
tured pottery on the banks of the Nile ; and let
us not leave wholly out of sight that more dis-
tant period, perhaps a million years ago, when
sparse tribes of savage men, contemporaneous
with the mammoths of Siberia and the cave-
237

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

tigers of Britain, struggled against the intense
cold of the glacial winters.

Nevertheless, though the Homeric age ap-
pears to be a late one when considered with
reference to the whole career of the human race,
there is a point of view from which it may be
justly regarded as the " youth of the world."
However long man may have existed upon the
earth, he becomes thoroughly and distinctly
human in the eyes of the historian only at the
epoch at which he began to create for himself
a literature. As far back as we can trace the
progress of the human race continuously by
means of the written word, so far do we feel a
true historical interest in its fortunes, and pur-
sue our studies with a sympathy which the mere
lapse of time is powerless to impair. But the
primeval man, whose history never has been and
never will be written, whose career on the earth,
dateless and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us
only by palaeontology, excites in us a very differ-
ent feeling. Though with the keenest interest we
ransack every nook and corner of the earth's sur-
face for information about him, we are all the
while aware that what we are studying is human
zoology and not history. Our Neanderthal
man is a specimen, not a character. We can-
not ask him the Homeric question, what is his
name, who were his parents, and how did he
get where we found him. His language has died
238

JUVENTUS MUNDI

with him, and he can render no account of him-
self. We can only regard him specifically as
Homo AnthropoS) a creature of bigger brain than
his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly
greater promise. But this, we say, is physical
science, and not history.

For the historian, therefore, who studies man
in his various social relations', the youth of the
world is the period at which literature begins.
We regard the history of the western world as
beginning about the tenth century before the
Christian era, because at that date we find litera-
ture, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to throw
direct light upon the social and intellectual con-
dition of a portion of mankind. That great
empires, rich in historical interest and in mate-
rials for sociological generalizations, had existed
for centuries before that date, in Egypt and
Assyria, we do not doubt, since they appear at
the dawn of history with all the marks of great
antiquity ; but the only steady historical light
thrown upon them shines from the pages of
Greek and Hebrew authors, and these know
them only in their latest period. For informa-
tion concerning their early careers we must look,
not to history, but to linguistic archaeology, a
science which can help us to general results, but
cannot enable us to fix dates, save in the crudest
manner.

We mention the tenth century before Christ
239

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

as the earliest period at which we can begin to
study human society in general and Greek so-
ciety in particular, through the medium of litera-
ture. But, strictly speaking, the epoch in question
is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. The
earliest ascertainable date in Greek history is
that of the Olympiad of Koroibos, B. c. 776.
There is no doubt that the Homeric poems
were written before this date, and that Homer
is therefore strictly prehistoric. Had this fact
been duly realized by those scholars who have
not attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profit-
less discussion might have been avoided. Sooner
or later, as Grote says, " the lesson must be
learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no
imaginable reach of critical acumen will of itself
enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in
the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence."
We do not know who Homer was ; we do not
know where or when he lived ; and in all prob-
ability we shall never know. The data for set-
tling the question are not now accessible, and it
is not likely that they will ever be discovered.
Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped
in an obscurity as deep as that which shrouds it
to-day. The case between the seven or eight
cities which claimed to be the birthplace of the
poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed,
cannot be decided. The feebleness of the evi-
dence brought into court may be judged from
240

JUVENTUS MUNDI

the fact that the claims of Chios and the story
of the poet's blindness rest alike upon a doubtful
allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which Thu-
kydides (iii. 104) accepted as authentic. The
majority of modern critics have consoled them-
selves with the vague conclusion that, as between
the two great divisions of the early Greek world,
Homer at least belonged to the Asiatic. But
Mr. Gladstone has shown good reasons for
doubting this opinion. He has pointed out sev-
eral instances in which the poems seem to be-
tray a closer topographical acquaintance with
European than with Asiatic Greece, and con-
cludes that Athens and Argos have at least as
good a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna.

It is far more desirable that we should form
an approximate opinion as to the date of the
Homeric poems than that we should seek to
determine the exact locality in which they ori-
ginated. Yet the one question is hardly less
obscure than the other. Different writers of
antiquity assigned eight different epochs to
Homer, of which the earliest is separated from
the most recent by an interval of four hundred
and sixty years, — a period as long as that which
separates the Black Prince from the Duke of
Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the
Christian era. While Theopompos quite pre-
posterously brings him down as late as the
twenty-third Olympiad, Krates removes him to
241

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the twelfth century B. c. The date ordinarily
accepted by modern critics is the one assigned
by Herodotos, 880 B. c. Yet Mr. Gladstone
shows reasons, which appear to me convincing,
for doubting or rejecting this date.

I refer to the much-abused legend of the
Children of Herakles, which seems capable of
yielding an item of trustworthy testimony, pro-
vided it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ
from Mr. Gladstone in not regarding the legend
as historical in its present shape. In my appre-
hension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical per-
sonages, have no value whatever ; and I faith-
fully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept any
date earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos.
The tale of the " Return of the Herakleids " is
undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the legend
of Hengst and Horsa ; yet, like the latter, it
doubtless embodies a historical occurrence. One
cannot approve, as scholarlike or philosophical,
the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in
the whole narrative nothing but a solar myth.
There certainly was a time when the Dorian
tribes — described in the legend as the allies of
the Children of Herakles — conquered Pelo-
ponnesos ; and that time was certainly subse-
quent to the composition of the Homeric poems.
It is incredible that the Iliad and the Odyssey
should ignore the existence of Dorians in Pelo-
ponnesos, if there were Dorians not only dwell-
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ing but ruling there at the time when the poems
were written. The poems are very accurate and
rigorously consistent in their use of ethnical
appellatives ; and their author, in speaking of
Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding
to peoples directly known to him as is Shake-
speare when he mentions Danes and Scotchmen.
Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and
Pelasgians dwelling in Peloponnesos ; and he
knows Dorians also, but only as a people inhab-
iting Crete. (Odyss. xix. 175.) With Homer,
moreover, the Hellenes are not the Greeks in
general, but only a people dwelling in the north,
inThessaly. When these poems were written,
Greece was not known as Hellas, but as Achaia,
— the whole country taking its name from the
Achaians, the dominant race in Peloponnesos.
Now at the beginning of the truly historical
period, in the eighth century B. c., all this is
changed. The Greeks as a people are called
Hellenes ; the Dorians rule in Peloponnesos,
while their lands are tilled by Argive Helots ;
and the Achaians appear only as an insignificant
people occupying the southern shore of the
Corinthian Gulf. How this change took place
we cannot tell. The explanation of it can never
be obtained from history, though some light
may perhaps be thrown upon it by linguistic
archaeology. But at all events it was a great
change, and could not have taken place in a
243

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

moment. It is fair to suppose that the Helleno-
Dorian conquest must have begun at least a
century before the first Olympiad ; for other-
wise the geographical limits of the various Greek
races would not have been so completely estab-
lished as we find them to have been at that
date. The Greeks, indeed, supposed it to have
begun at least three centuries earlier, but it is
impossible to collect evidence which will either
refute or establish that opinion. For our pur-
poses it is enough to know that the conquest
could not have taken place later than 900 B. c. ;
and if this be the case, the minimum date for the
composition of the Homeric poems must be the
tenth century before Christ ; which is, in fact,
the date assigned by Aristotle. Thus far, and no
farther, I believe it possible to go with safety.
Whether the poems were composed in the tenth,
eleventh, or twelfth century cannot be deter-
mined. We are justified only in placing them
far enough back to allow the Helleno-Dorian
conquest to intervene between their composi-
tion and the beginning of recorded history. The
tenth century B. c. is the latest date which will
account for all the phenomena involved in the
case, and with this result we must be satisfied.
Even on this showing, the Iliad and Odyssey
appear as the oldest existing specimens of Aryan
literature, save perhaps the hymns of the Rig-
Veda and the sacred books of the Avesta.
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The apparent difficulty of preserving such
long poems for three or four centuries without
the aid of writing may seem at first sight to jus-
tify the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are mere
collections of ancient ballads, like those which
make up the Mahabharata, preserved in the
memories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first
arranged under the orders of Peisistratos. But
on a careful examination this hypothesis is seen
to raise more difficulties than it solves. What
was there in the position of Peisistratos, or of
Athens itself in the sixth century B. c., so au-
thoritative as to compel all Greeks to recognize
the recension then and there made of their re-
vered poet ? Besides which the celebrated ordi-
nance of Solon respecting the rhapsodes at the
Panathenaia obliges us to infer the existence of
written manuscripts of Homer previous to 550
B. c. As Mr. Grote well observes, the inter-
ference of Peisistratos " presupposes a certain
foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main line-
aments of which were familiar to the Grecian
public, although many of the rhapsodes in their
practice may have deviated from it both by
omission and interpolation. In correcting the
Athenian recitations conformably with such un-
derstood general type, Peisistratos might hope
both to procure respect for Athens and to con-
stitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But
this step of * collecting the torn body of sacred
245

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Homer ' is something generically different from
the composition of a new Iliad out of preexist-
ing songs : the former is as easy, suitable, and
promising as the latter is violent and gratui-
tous." l

As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and
Odyssey are too long to have been preserved
by memory, it may be met by a simple denial.
It is a strange objection indeed, coming from a
man of Wolfs retentive memory. I do not see
how the acquisition of the two poems can be
regarded as such a very arduous task ; and if
literature were as scanty now as in Greek an-
tiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who
would long since have had them at their tongues'
end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with but little conscious
effort, managed to carry in his head a very con-
siderable portion of Greek and Latin classic lit-
erature ; and Niebuhr (who once restored from
recollection a book of accounts which had been
accidentally destroyed) was in the habit of refer-
ring to book and chapter of an ancient author
without consulting his notes. Nay, there is Pro-
fessor Sophocles, of Harvard University, who,
if you suddenly stop and interrogate him in the
street, will tell you just how many times any
given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in
^Eschylos, or in Plato, and will obligingly re-
hearse for you the context. If all extant copies
1 Hist. Greece, vol. ii. p. 208.

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JUVENTUS MUNDI

of the Homeric poems were to be gathered to-
gether and burnt up to-day, like Don Quixote's
library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of
which Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the
streets of Granada, the poems could very likely
be reproduced and orally transmitted for sev-
eral generations ; and much easier must it have
been for the Greeks to preserve these books,
which their imagination invested with a quasi-
sanctity, and which constituted the greater part
of the literary furniture of their minds. In
Xenophon's time there were educated gentle-
men at Athens who could repeat both Iliad and
Odyssey verbatim. (Xenoph. Sympos., in. 5.)
Besides this, we know that at Chios there was a
company of bards, known as Homerids, whose
business it was to recite these poems from
memory ; and from the edicts of Solon and the
Sikyonian Kleisthenes (Herod., v. 67), we may
infer that the case was the same in other parts
of Greece. Passages from the Iliad used to be
sung at the Pythian festivals, to the accompani-
ment of the harp (Athenaeus, xiv. 638), and in
at least two of the Ionic islands of the ^Egaean
there were regular competitive exhibitions by
trained young men, at which prizes were given
to the best reciter. The difficulty of preserving
the poems, under such circumstances, becomes
very insignificant ; and the Wolfian argument
quite vanishes when we reflect that it would
247

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

have been no easier to preserve a dozen or
twenty short poems than two long ones. Nay,
the coherent, orderly arrangement of the Iliad
and Odyssey would make them even easier to
remember than a group of short rhapsodies not
consecutively arranged.

When we come to interrogate the poems
themselves, we find in them quite convincing
evidence that they were originally composed for
the ear alone, and without reference to manu-
script assistance. They abound in catchwords
and in verbal repetitions. The " Catalogue of
Ships," as Mr. Gladstone has acutely observed,
is arranged in well-defined sections, in such a
way that the end of each section suggests the
beginning of the next one. It resembles the
versus memoriales found in old-fashioned gram-
mars. But the most convincing proof of all is
to be found in the changes which Greek pro-
nunciation went through between the ages of
Homer and Peisistratos. " At the time when
these poems were composed, the digamma (or
w) was an effective consonant, and figured as
such in the structure of the verse ; at the time
when they were committed to writing, it had
ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never
found a place in any of the manuscripts, — in-
somuch that the Alexandrian critics, though
they knew of its existence in the much later
poems of Alkaios and Sappho, never recognized
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JUVENTUS MUNDI

it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various per-
plexities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the
digamma, were corrected by different grammat-
ical stratagems. But the whole history of this
lost letter is very curious, and is rendered intel-
ligible only by the supposition that the Iliad
and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time
to the memory, the voice, and the ear exclu-
sively." 1

Many of these facts are of course fully recog-
nized by the Wolfians ; but the inference drawn
from them, that the Homeric poems began to
exist in a piecemeal condition, is, as we have
seen, unnecessary. These poems may indeed be
compared, in a certain sense, with the early sa-
cred and epic literature of the Jews, Indians,
and Teutons. But if we assign a plurality of
composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the
Mahabharata, the Vedas, and the Edda, we do
so because of internal evidence furnished by
the books themselves, and not because these
books could not have been preserved by oral
tradition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems
any such internal evidence of dual or plural
origin as is furnished by the interlaced Elohis-
tic and Jehovistic documents of the Pentateuch ?
A careful investigation will show that there is
not. Any scholar who has given some attention
to the subject can readily distinguish the Elo-
1 Grote, Hist. Greece, vol. ii. p. 198.
249

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

histic from the Jehovistic portions of the Penta-
teuch ; and, save in the case of a few sporadic
verses, most Biblical critics coincide in the sepa-
ration which they make between the two. But
the attempts which have been made to break
up the Iliad. and Odyssey have resulted in no
such harmonious agreement. There are as many
systems as there are critics, and naturally enough.
For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as much alike
as two peas, and the resemblance which holds
between the two holds also between the differ-
ent parts of each poem. From the appearance of
the injured Chryses in the Grecian camp down
to the intervention of Athene on the field of
contest at Ithaka, we find in each book and in
each paragraph the same style, the same pecu-
liarities of expression, the same habits of thought,
the same quite unique manifestations of the
faculty of observation. Now if the style were
commonplace, the observation slovenly, or the
thought trivial, as is wont to be the case in
ballad literature, this argument from similarity
might not carry with it much conviction. But
when we reflect that throughout the whole course
of human history no other works, save the best
tragedies of Shakespeare, have ever been writ-
ten which for combined keenness of observa-
tion, elevation of thought, and sublimity of style
can compare with the Homeric poems, we must
admit that the argument has very great weight
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indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and
twenty-fourth books of the Iliad. According
to the theory of Lachmann, the most eminent
champion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are
by different authors. Human speech has per-
haps never been brought so near to the limit of
its capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the
scene between Priam and Achilleus in the twenty-
fourth book ; while the interview between Hek-
tor and Andromache in the sixth similarly well-
nigh exhausts the power of language. Now, the
literary critic has a right to ask whether it is
probable that two such passages, agreeing per-
fectly in turn of expression, and alike exhibiting
the same unapproachable degree of excellence,
could have been produced by two different
authors. And the physiologist — with some
inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's
theory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius
even as we surpass the negroes — has a right to
ask whether it is in the natural course of things
for two such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing
in their minutest psychological characteristics, to
be produced at the same time. And the diffi-
culty thus raised becomes overwhelming when
we reflect that it is the coexistence of not two
only, but at least twenty such geniuses which
the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account
for. That theory worked very well as long as
scholars thoughtlessly assumed that the Iliad
251

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

and Odyssey were analogous to ballad poetry.
But, except in the simplicity of the primitive
diction, there is no such analogy. The power
and beauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly
lost as when it is rendered into the style of a
modern ballad. One might as well attempt to
preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close
of Milton's Lycidas by turning it into the light
Anacreontics of the ode to " Eros stung by a
Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry,
which defies translation, is its union of the siirH
plicity characteristic of an early age with a sus-
tained elevation of style, which can be explained
only as due to individual genius.

The same conclusion is forced upon us when
we examine the artistic structure of these poems.
With regard to the Odyssey in particular, Mr.
Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is
so thoroughly integral that no considerable por-
tion could be subtracted without converting the
poem into a more or less admirable fragment.
The Iliad stands in a somewhat different posi-
tion. There are unmistakable peculiarities in
its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote,
who utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to
regard it as made up of two poems ; although
he inclines to the belief that the later poem was
grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by
way of further elucidation and expansion ; just
as Goethe, in his old age, added a new part to
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" Faust." According to Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as
originally conceived, was properly an Achilleis ;
its design being, as indicated in the opening
lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achil-
leus and the unutterable woes which it entailed
upon the Greeks. The plot of this primitive
Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I.,
VIII., and XI. -XXII. ; and, in Mr. Grote's
opinion, the remaining books injure the sym-
metry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging
the duration of the Wrath, while the embassy
to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly antici-
pates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nine-
teenth, and is therefore, as a piece of bungling
work, to be referred to the hands of an inferior
interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that
these books, with the exception of the ninth,
were subsequently added by the poet, with a
view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a
real Iliad, describing the war of the Greeks
against Troy. With reference to this hypothe-
sis, I gladly admit that Mr. Grote is, of all
men now living, the one best entitled to a re-
verential hearing on almost any point connected
with Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to
me that his theory rests solely upon imagined
difficulties which have no real existence. I doubt
if any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much,
would ever be struck by these alleged inconsist-
encies of structure, unless they were suggested
253

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

by some a priori theory. And I fear that the
Wolfian theory, in spite of Mr. Grote's em-
phatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of
these over-refined criticisms. Even as it stands,
the Iliad is not an account of the war against
Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the siege,
and it does not continue to the capture of the
city. It is simply occupied with an episode in
the war, — with the wrath of Achilleus and its
consequences, according to the plan marked out
in the opening lines. The supposed additions,
therefore, though they may have given to the
poem a somewhat wider scope, have not at any
rate changed its primitive character of an Achil-
leis. To my mind they seem even called for
by the original conception of the consequences
of the wrath. To have inserted the battle at
the ships, in which Sarpedon breaks down the
wall of the Greeks, immediately after the occur-
rences of the first book, would have been too
abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant
promise to Thetis, must not be expected so
suddenly to exhibit such fell determination.
And after the long series of books describing
the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Aga-
memnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the power-
ful intervention of Achilleus appears in far
grander proportions than would otherwise be
possible. As for the embassy to Achilleus, in
the ninth book, I am unable to see how the
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JUVENTUS MUNDI

final reconciliation with Agamemnon would be
complete without it. As Mr. Gladstone well
observes, what Achilleus wants is not restitu-
tion, but apology ; and Agamemnon offers no
apology until the nineteenth book. In his an-
swer to the ambassadors, Achilleus scornfully
rejects the proposals which imply that the
mere return of Briseis will satisfy his righteous
resentment, unless it be accompanied with that
public humiliation to which circumstances have
not yet compelled the leader of the Greeks to
subject himself. Achilleus is not to be bought
or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of the
Greeks in the thirteenth book does not prevail
upon him ; nor is there anything in the poem
to show that he ever would have laid aside his
wrath, had not the death of Patroklos supplied
him with a new and wholly unforeseen motive.
It seems to me that his entrance into the bat-
tle after the death of his friend would lose half
its poetic effect, were it not preceded by some
such scene as that in the ninth book, in which
he is represented as deaf to all ordinary induce-
ments. As for the two concluding books, which
Mr. Grote is inclined to regard as a subsequent
addition, not necessitated by the plan of the
poem, I am at a loss to see how the poem can be
considered complete without them. To leave
the bodies of Patroklos and Hektor unburied
would be in the highest degree shocking to
255

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Greek religious feelings. Remembering the
sentence incurred, in far less superstitious times,
by the generals at Arginusai, it is impossible to
believe that any conclusion which left Patroklos's
manes unpropitiated, and the mutilated corpse
of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfied
either the poet or his hearers. For further par-
ticulars I must refer the reader to the excellent
criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, and also to the
article on " Greek History and Legend " in the
second volume of Mr. Mill's " Dissertations
and Discussions." A careful study of the argu-
ments of these writers, and, above all, a thor-
ough and independent examination of the Iliad
itself, will, I believe, convince the student that
this great poem is from beginning to end the
consistent production of a single author.

The arguments of those who would attribute
the Iliad and Odyssey, taken as wholes, to two
different authors, rest chiefly upon some appar-
ent discrepancies in the mythology of the two
poems ; but many of these difficulties have been
completely solved by the recent progress of the
science of comparative mythology. Thus, for
example, the fact that, in the Iliad, Hephaistos
is called the husband of Charis, while in the
Odyssey he is called the husband of Aphrodite,
has been cited even by Mr. Grote as evidence
that the two poems are not by the same author.
It seems to me that one such discrepancy, in

JUVENTUS MUNDI

the midst of complete general agreement, would
be much better explained as Cervantes explained
his own inconsistency with reference to the steal-
ing of Sancho's mule, in the twenty-second
chapter of " Don Quixote." But there is no
discrepancy. Aphrodite, though originally the
moon-goddess, like the German Horsel, had
before Homer's time acquired many of the at-
tributes of the dawn-goddess Athene, while her
lunar characteristics had been to a great extent
transferred to Artemis and Persephone. In her
renovated character, as goddess of the dawn,
Aphrodite became identified with Charis, who
appears in the Rig- Veda as dawn-goddess. In
the post-Homeric mythology, the two were
again separated, and Charis, becoming divided
in personality, appears as the Charites, or
Graces, who were supposed to be constant at-
tendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric
poems the two are still identical, and either
Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wife of
the fire-god, without inconsistency.

Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Glad-
stone is quite right in maintaining that both the
Iliad and Odyssey are, from beginning to end,
with the exception of a few insignificant inter-
polations, the work of a single author, whom
we have no ground for calling by any other
name than that of Homer. I believe, more-
over, that this author lived before the begin-
257

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

ning of authentic history, and that we can de-
termine neither his age nor his country with
precision. We can only decide that he was a
Greek who lived at some time previous to the
year 900 B. c.

Here, however, I must begin to part com-
pany with Mr. Gladstone, and shall henceforth
unfortunately have frequent occasion to differ
from him on points of fundamental importance.
For Mr. Gladstone not only regards the Ho-
meric age as strictly within the limits of authentic
history, but he even goes much further than
this. He would not only fix the date of Homer
positively in the twelfth century B. c., but he
regards the Trojan war as a purely historical
event, of which Homer is the authentic histo-
rian and the probable eye-witness. Nay, he
even takes the word of the poet as proof con-
clusive of the historical character of events hap-
pening several generations before the Troika,
according to the legendary chronology. He
not only regards Agamemnon, Achilleus, and
Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the
same reality to characters like Danaos, Kadmos,
and Perseus, and talks of the Pelopid and
Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos,
with as much confidence as if he were dealing
with Karlings or Capetians, or with the epoch
of the Crusades.

It is disheartening, at the present day, and

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after so much has been finally settled by writers
like Grote, Mommsen, and Sir G. C. Lewis, to
come upon such views in the work of a man of
scholarship and intelligence. One begins to
wonder how many more times it will be neces-
sary to prove that dates and events are of no
historical value, unless attested by nearly con-
temporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarch
were able men no doubt, and Thukydides was
a profound historian ; but what these writers
thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age of
Homer, and the war of Troy, can have no great
weight with the critical historian, since even in
the time of Thukydides these events were as
completely obscured by lapse of time as they
are now. There is no literary Greek history be-
fore the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, three
centuries subsequent to the first recorded Olym-
piad. A portion of this period is satisfactorily
covered by inscriptions, but even these fail us
before we get within a century of this earliest
ascertainable date. Even the career of the law-
giver Lykourgos, which seems to belong to the
commencement of the eighth century B. c., pre-
sents us, from lack of anything like contem-
porary records, with many insoluble problems.
The Heleno-Dorian conquest, as we have seen,
must have occurred at some time or other ; but
it evidently did not occur within two centuries
of the earliest known inscription, and it is there-
259

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

fore folly to imagine that we can determine its
date or ascertain the circumstances which at-
tended it. Anterior to this event there is but
one fact in Greek antiquity directly known to
us> — the existence of the Homeric poems.
The belief that there was a Trojan war rests
exclusively upon the contents of those poems :
there is no other independent testimony to it
whatever. But the Homeric poems are of no
value as testimony to the truth of the state-
ments contained in them, unless it can be proved
that their author was either contemporary with
the Troika, or else derived his information from
contemporary witnesses. This can never be
proved. To assume, as Mr. Gladstone does,
that Homer lived within fifty years after the
Troika, is to make a purely gratuitous assump-
tion. For aught the wisest historian can tell,
the interval may have been five hundred years,
or a thousand. Indeed the Iliad itself expressly
declares that it is dealing with an ancient state
of things which no longer exists. It is difficult
to see what else can be meant by the statement
that the heroes of the Troika belong to an order
of men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad,
v. 304.) Most assuredly Achilleus the son of
Thetis, and Sarpedon the son of Zeus, and
Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary
mortals, such as might have been seen and con-
versed with by the poet's grandfather. They be-
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JUVENTUS MUNDI

long to an inferior order of gods, according to
the peculiar anthropomorphism of the Greeks,
in which deity and humanity are so closely min-
gled that it is difficult to tell where the one
begins and the other ends. Diomedes, single-
handed, vanquishes not only the gentle Aphro-
dite, but even the god of battles himself, the
terrible Ares. Nestor quaffs lightly from a gob-
let which, we are told, not two men among the
poet's contemporaries could by their united ex-
ertions raise and place upon a table. Aias and
Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous masses of
rock as easily as an ordinary man would throw
a pebble. All this shows that the poet, in his
naive way, conceiving of these heroes as per-
sonages of a remote past, was endeavouring as
far as possible to ascribe to them the attributes
of superior beings. If all that were divine,
marvellous, or superhuman were to be left out
of the poems, the supposed historical residue
would hardly be worth the trouble of saving.
As Mr. Cox well observes, " It is of the very
essence of the narrative that Paris, who has de-
serted Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren,
and before whom Here, Athene, and Aphro-
dite had appeared as claimants for the golden
apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of
the Dioskouroi ; that the chiefs are summoned
together for no other purpose than to avenge
her woes and wrongs ; that Achilleus, the son
261

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

of the sea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invin-
cible weapons and the lord of undying horses,
goes to fight in a quarrel which is not his own ;
that his wrath is roused because he is robbed of
the maiden Briseis, and that henceforth he takes
no part in the strife until his friend Patroklos
has been slain ; that then he puts on the new
armour which Thetis brings to him from the
anvil of Hephaistos, and goes forth to win the
victory. The details are throughout of the same
nature. Achilleus sees and converses with
Athene ; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes,
and Sleep and Death bear away the lifeless Sar-
pedon on their noiseless wings to the far-off
land of light." In view of all this it is evident
that Homer was not describing, like a salaried
historiographer, the state of things which ex-
isted in the time of his father or grandfather.
To his mind the occurrences which he described
were those of a remote, a wonderful, a semi-
divine past.

This conclusion, which I have thus far sup-
ported merely by reference to the Iliad itself,
becomes irresistible as soon as we take into ac-
count the results obtained during the past thirty
years by the science of comparative mythology.
As long as our view was restricted to Greece,
it was perhaps excusable that Achilleus and
Paris should be taken for exaggerated copies of
actual persons. Since the day when Grimm laid
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JUVENTUS MUNDI

the foundations of the science of mythology, all
this has been changed. It is now held that
Achilleus and Paris and Helena are to be found,
not only in the Iliad, but also in the Rig- Veda,
and therefore, as mythical conceptions, date,
not from Homer, but from a period preceding
the dispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale
of the Wrath of Achilleus, far from originating
with Homer, far from being recorded by the
author of the Iliad as by an eye-witness, must
have been known in its essential features in
Aryana-vaedjo, at that remote epoch when the
Indian, the Greek, and the Teuton were as yet
one and the same. For the story has been re-
tained by the three races alike, in all its prin-
cipal features ; though the Veda has left it in
the sky where it originally belonged, while the
Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have brought it
down to earth, the one locating it in Asia
Minor, and the other in Northwestern Europe.1

1 For the precise extent to which I would indorse the
theory that the Iliad myth is an account of the victory of light
over darkness, let me refer to what I have said above on p.
1 8 i . I do not suppose that the struggle between light and
darkness was Homer's subject in the Iliad any more than
it was Shakespeare's subject in Hamlet. Homer's subject
was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's subject
was the vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the
story of Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is un-
mistakably the story of the quarrel between summer and win-
ter ; and the moody prince is as much a solar hero as Odin
263

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

In the Rig- Veda the Panis are the genii of
night and winter, corresponding to the Nibe-
lungs, or " Children of the Mist," in the Teu-
tonic legend, and to the children of Nephele

himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des Shakespeare, i. 127—
133. Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this, as
Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The
two stories, therefore, are not to be taken as sun myths in
their present form. They are the offspring of other stories
which were sun myths ; they are stories which conform to the
sun-myth type after the manner above illustrated in the paper
on Light and Darkness. [Hence there is nothing unintelligi-
ble in the inconsistency — which seems to puzzle Max Miil-
ler (Science of Language, 6th ed. vol. ii. p. 516, note 20)
— of investing Paris with many of the characteristics of the
children of light. Supposing, as we must, that the primitive
sense of the Iliad myth had as entirely disappeared in the
Homeric age as the primitive sense of the Hamlet myth had
disappeared in the times of Elizabeth, the fit ground for won-
der is that such inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The
physical theory of myths will be properly presented and com-
prehended, only when it is understood that we accept the
physical derivation of such stories as the Iliad myth in much
the same way that we are bound to accept the physical ety-
mologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, convince,
deliberate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale Col-
lege, in his Philological Studies, — a little book which I
used to read with delight when a boy, — describes such ety-
mologies as " faded metaphors." In similar wise, while re-
fraining from characterizing the Iliad or the tragedy of Ham-
let — any more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant by
Sue, or La Mais on Forestiere by Erckmann-Chatrian — as
nature myths, I would at the same time consider these poems
well described as embodying " faded nature-myths."
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JUVENTUS MUNDI

(cloud) in the Greek myth of the Golden
Fleece. The Panis steal the cattle of the Sun
(Indra, Helios, Herakles), and carry them by
an unknown route to a dark cave eastward.
Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to
find and recover them. The Panis then tamper
with Sarama, and try their best to induce her
to betray her solar lord. For a while she is
prevailed upon to dally with them ; yet she
ultimately returns to give Indra the information
needful in order that he might conquer the
Panis, just as Helena, in the slightly altered
version, ultimately returns to her western home,
carrying with her the treasures (/m/juara, Iliad,
ii. 285) of which Paris had robbed Menelaos.
But, before the bright Indra and his solar he-
roes can reconquer their treasures they must
take captive the offspring of Brisaya, the violet
light of morning. Thus Achilleus, answering
to the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive
the daughter of Brises. But as the sun must
always be parted from the morning light, to
return to it again just before setting, so Achil-
leus loses Briseis, and regains her only just
before his final struggle. In similar wise Hera-
kles is parted from lole (" the violet one "),
and Sigurd from Brynhild. In sullen wrath the
hero retires from the conflict, and his Myrmi-
dons are no longer seen on the battlefield, as
the sun hides behind the dark cloud and his
265

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

rays no longer appear about him. Yet toward
the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in
his might, clothed in the dazzling armour
wrought for him by the fire-god Hephaistos,
and with his invincible spear slays the great
storm-cloud, which during his absence had well-
nigh prevailed over the champions of the day-
light. But his triumph is short-lived ; for hav-
ing trampled on the clouds that had opposed
him, while yet crimsoned with the fierce car-
nage, the sharp arrow of the night-demon Paris
slays him at the Western Gates. We have not
space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's
" Mythology of the Aryan Nations," and
" Tales of Ancient Greece," the reader will find
the entire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey
thus minutely illustrated by comparison with
the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibe-
lungs.

Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly
are, they are modern in comparison with the
tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here unfolded.
The date of the entrance of the Greeks into
Europe will perhaps never be determined ; but
I do not see how any competent scholar can
well place it at less than eight hundred or a
thousand years before the time of Homer. Be-
tween the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Um-
brian, and Keltic languages had time to acquire
distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore,
266

JUVENTUS MUNDI

than the Homeric " juventus mundi " was that
" youth of the world," in which the Aryan
forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and
possessing no philosophy but fetichism, delib-
erately spoke of the Sun, and the Dawn, and
the Clouds, as persons or as animals. The
Veda, though composed much later than this,
— perhaps as late as the Iliad, — nevertheless
preserves the record of the mental life of this
period. The Vedic poet is still dimly aware
that Sarama is the fickle twilight, and the Panis
the night-demons who strive to coax her from
her allegiance to the day-god. He keeps the
scene of action in the sky. But the Homeric
Greek had long since forgotten that Helena and
Paris were anything more than semi-divine
mortals, the daughter of Zeus and the son of
the Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu under-
stood that Dyaus (" the bright one ") meant
the sky, and Sarama (" the creeping one ") the
dawn, and spoke significantly when he called
the latter the daughter of the former. But the
Greek could not know that Zeus was derived
from a root div, " to shine," or that Helena
belonged to a root sar> " to creep." Phonetic
change thus helped him to rise from fetichism
to polytheism. His nature-gods became thor-
oughly anthropomorphic ; and he probably no
more remembered that Achilleus originally sig-
nified the sun, than we remember that the word
267

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

God, which we use to denote the most vast of
conceptions, originally meant simply the Storm-
wind. Indeed, when the fetichistic tendency
led the Greek again to personify the powers of
nature, he had recourse to new names formed
from his own language. Thus, beside Apollo
we have Helios ; Selene beside Artemis and
Persephone ; Eos beside Athene ; Gaia beside
Demeter. As a further consequence of this de-
composition and new development of the old
Aryan mythology, we find, as might be ex-
pected, that the Homeric poems are not always
consistent in their use of their mythic materials.
Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is — to Max
M tiller's perplexity — invested with many of
the attributes of the bright solar heroes. " Like
Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he is
doomed to bring ruin on his parents ; like them
he is exposed in his infancy on the hillside,
and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar
heroes begin life in this way. Whether, like
Apollo, born of the dark night (Leto), or like
Oidipous, of the violet dawn (lokaste), they
are alike destined to bring destruction on their
parents, as the night and the dawn are both
destroyed by the sun. The exposure of the
child in infancy represents the long rays of the
morning sun resting on the hillside. Then Paris
forsakes Oinone (" the wine-coloured one "),
but meets her again at the gloaming when she
268

JUVENTUS MUNDI

lays herself by his side amid the crimson flames
of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar
hero, is made to fight on the side of the Nibe-
lungs or Trojans, attended by his friend
Glaukos (" the brilliant one "). They com-
mand the Lykians, or " children of light ; " and
with them comes also Memnon, son of the
Dawn, from the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the
favourite haunt of Zeus and the gods of
Olympos.

The Iliad myth must therefore have been
current many ages before the Greeks inhabited
Greece, long before there was any Ilion to be
conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid
the supposition that the legend, as we have it,
may have been formed by the crystallization of
mythical conceptions about a nucleus of gen-
uine tradition. In this view I am upheld by a
most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A.
Freeman, who finds in Carlovingian romance
an excellent illustration of the problem before
us.

The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical
personage. He is supposed to have been a
Frenchman, at a time when neither the French
nation nor the French language can properly
be said to have existed ; and he is represented
as a doughty crusader, although crusading was
not thought of until long after the Karolingian
era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagne are
269

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

not conformed to the ordinary rules of geo-
graphy and chronology. He is a myth, and,
what is more, he is a solar myth, — an avatar,
or at least a representative, of Odin in his solar
capacity. If in his case legend were not con-
trolled and rectified by history, he would be for
us as unreal as Agamemnon.

History, however, tells us that there was an
Emperor Karl, German in race, name, and lan-
guage, who was one of the two or three greatest
men of action that the world has ever seen, and
who in the ninth century ruled over all Western
Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in
many particulars the mythical Charlemagne.
The legend has preserved the fact, which with-
out the information supplied by history we might
perhaps set down as a fiction, that there was a
time when Germany, Gaul, Italy, and part of
Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr.
Freeman has well observed, the mythical cru-
sades of Charlemagne are good evidence that
there were crusades, although the real Karl had
nothing whatever to do with one.

Now the case of Agamemnon may be much
like that of Charlemagne, except that we no
longer have history to help us in rectifying the
legend. The Iliad preserves the tradition of a
time when a large portion of the islands and
mainland of Greece were at least partially sub-
ject to a common suzerain ; and, as Mr. Freeman
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JUVENTUS MUNDI

has again shrewdly suggested, the assignment
of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or
Sparta or Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty,
is strong evidence of the trustworthiness of the
tradition. It appears to show that the legend was
constrained by some remembered fact, instead
of being guided by general probability. Charle-
magne's seat of government has been transferred
in romance from Aachen to Paris ; had it really
been at Paris, says Mr. Freeman, no one would
have thought of transferring it to Aachen.
Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though
uncontrolled by historic records, is here at least
supported by archaeologic remains, which prove
Mykenai to have been at some time or other a
place of great consequence. Then, as to the
Trojan war, we know that the Greeks several
times crossed the ^gaean and colonized a large
part of the seacoast of Asia Minor. In order
to do this it was necessary to oust from their
homes many warlike communities of Lydians
and Bithynians, and we may be sure that this was
not done without prolonged fighting. There
may very probably have been now and then a
levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, as there was
in mediaeval Europe ; and whether the great
suzerain at Mykenai ever attended one or not,
legend would be sure to send him on such an
expedition, as it afterwards sent Charlemagne
on a crusade.

271

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon
and Menelaos may represent dimly remembered
sovereigns or heroes, with their characters and
actions distorted to suit the exigencies of a nar-
rative founded upon a solar myth. The char-
acter of the Nibelungenlied here well illustrates
that of the Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen
and Gunther, seem to be mere personifications
of physical phenomena ; but Etzel and Dietrich
are none other than Attila and Theodoric sur-
rounded with mythical attributes ; and even the
conception of Brunhild has been supposed to
contain elements derived from the traditional re-
collection of the historical Brunehault. When,
therefore, Achilleus is said, like a true son-god,
to have died by a wound from a sharp instru-
ment in the only vulnerable part of his body,
we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne
conducts himself in many respects like a solar
deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso repre-
sents the sun ensnared and held captive by the
pale goddess of night, the legend of Frederic
Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain
embodies a portion of a kindred conception.
We know that Charlemagne and Frederic have
been substituted for Odin ; we may suspect that
with the mythical impersonations of Achilleus
and Odysseus some traditional figures may be
blended. We should remember that in early
times the solar myth was a sort of type after
272

JUVENTUS MUNDI

which all wonderful stories would be patterned,
and that to such a type tradition also would be
made to conform.

In suggesting this view, we are not opening
the door to Euhemerism. If there is any one
conclusion concerning the Homeric poems which
the labours of a whole generation of scholars
may be said to have satisfactorily established,
it is this, that no trustworthy history can be
obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey
merely by sifting out the mythical element.
Even if the poems contain the faint reminis-
cence of an actual event, that event is inextri-
cably wrapped up in mythical phraseology, so
that by no cunning of the scholar can it be
construed into history. In view of this it is
quite useless for Mr. Gladstone to attempt to
base historical conclusions upon the fact that
Helena is always called " Argive Helen," or to
draw ethnological inferences from the circum-
stances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest
of the Greek heroes, have yellow hair, while the
Trojans are never so described. The Argos of
the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos, though
doubtless so construed even in Homer's time.
It is " the bright land " where Zeus resides, and
the epithet is applied to his wife Here and his
daughter Helena, as well as to the dog of Odys-
seus, who reappears with Sarameyas in the Veda.
As for yellow hair, there is no evidence that
273

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Greeks have ever commonly possessed it ; but
no other colour would do for a solar hero, and
it accordingly characterizes the entire company
of them, wherever found, while for the Trojans,
or children of night, it is not required.

A wider acquaintance with the results which
have been obtained during the past thirty years
by the comparative study of languages and
mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to
reconsider many of his views concerning the
Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led
him to cut out half or two thirds of his book
as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter on the
divinities of Olympos would certainly have had
to be rewritten, and the ridiculous theory of a
primeval revelation abandoned. One can hardly
preserve one's gravity when Mr. Gladstone de-
rives Apollo from the Hebrew Messiah, and
Athene from the Logos. To accredit Homer
with an acquaintance with the doctrine of the
Logos, which did not exist until the time of
Philo, and did not receive its authorized Chris-
tian form until the middle of the second century
after Christ, is certainly a strange proceeding.
We shall next perhaps be invited to believe that
the authors of the Volsunga Saga obtained the
conception of Sigurd from the "Thirty-Nine
Articles." It is true that these deities, Athene
and Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more digni-
fied, on the whole, than any of the other divini-
274

JUVENTUS MUNDI

ties of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as
Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are never de-
ceived or frustrated. For all Hellas, Apollo
was the interpreter of futurity, and in the maid
Athene we have perhaps the highest conception
of deity to which the Greek mind had attained
in the early times. In the Veda, Athene is
nothing but the dawn ; but in the Greek my-
thology, while the merely sensuous glories of
daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes
the impersonation of the illuminating and know-
ledge-giving light of the sky. As the dawn, she
is daughter of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic
language springs from his forehead ; but, accord-
ing to the Greek conception, this imagery signi-
fies that she shares, more than any other deity,
in the boundless wisdom of Zeus. The know-
ledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the pecu-
liar privilege of the sun, who, from his lofty
position, sees everything that takes place upon
the earth. Even the secondary divinity Helios
possesses this prerogative to a certain extent.

Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a
Phoenician ancestry for the Greek divinities.
But the same lack of acquaintance with the old
Aryan mythology vitiates all his conclusions.
No doubt the Greek mythology is in some
particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions.
Aphrodite was originally a purely Greek divinity,
but in course of time she acquired some of the
275

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and was hardly
improved by the change. Adonis is simply a
Semitic divinity, imported into Greece. But the
same cannot be proved of Poseidon ; l far less of
Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sara-
meyas, the rising wind, the son of Sarama the
dawn, the lying, tricksome wind-god, who in-
vented music, and conducts the souls of dead
men to the house of Hades, even as his coun-
terpart the Norse Odin rushes over the tree-
tops leading the host of the departed. When
one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, referred
to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's
promise to Noah, one is at a loss to understand
the relationship between the two conceptions.
Nothing could be more natural to the Greeks
than to call the rainbow the messenger of the
sky-god to earth-dwelling men ; to call it a token
set in the sky by Jevohah, as the Hebrews did,
was a very different thing. We may admit the

1 I have no opinion as to the nationality of the Earth-
shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I believe
we can hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox,
that it is unknown. It may well be doubted, however, whether
much good is likely to come of comparisons between Posei-
don, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of distinctions between
the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's
Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan,
London, 1872, — a book which is open to several of the
criticisms here directed against Mr. Gladstone's manner of
theorizing.

276

JUVENTUS MUNDI

very close resemblance between the myth of
Bellerophon and Anteia, and that of Joseph and
Zuleikha ; but the fact that the Greek story is
explicable from Aryan antecedents, while the
Hebrew story is isolated, might perhaps suggest
the inference that the Hebrews were the bor-
rowers, as they undoubtedly were in the case of
the myth of Eden. Lastly, to conclude that
Helios is an Eastern deity, because he reigns in
the East over Thrinakia, is wholly unwarranted.
Is not Helios pure Greek for the sun ? and where
should his sacred island be placed, if not in the
East? As for his oxen, which wrought such
dire destruction to the comrades of Odysseus,
and which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anoma-
lous, they are those very same unhappy cattle,
the clouds, which were stolen by the storm-
demon Cacus and the wind-deity Hermes, and
which furnished endless material for legends to
the poets of the Veda.

But the whole subject of comparative my-
thology seems to be terra incognita to Mr.
Gladstone. He pursues the even tenor of his
way in utter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn,
and Breal, and Dasent, and Burnouf. He takes
no note of the Rig- Veda, nor does he seem to
realize that there was ever a time when the an-
cestors of the Greeks and Hindus worshipped
the same gods. Two or three times he cites
Max Muller, but makes no use of the copious
277

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

data which might be gathered from him. The
only work which seems really to have attracted
his attention is M. Jacolliot's very discreditable
performance called " The Bible in India." Mr.
Gladstone does not, indeed, unreservedly ap-
prove of this book ; but neither does he appear
to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece of char-
latanry, written by a man ignorant of the very
rudiments of the subject which he professes to
handle.

Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth
when he comes to treat purely philological ques-
tions. Of the science of philology, as based
upon established laws of phonetic change, he
seems to have no knowledge whatever. He
seems to think that two words are sufficiently
proved to be connected when they are seen to
resemble each other in spelling or in sound.
Thus he quotes approvingly a derivation of the
name Themis from an assumed verb them, " to
speak," whereas it is notoriously derived from
Ti'077/u, as statute comes ultimately from stare.
His reference of hieros^ " a priest," and geron,
" an old man," to the same root, is utterly base-
less ; the one is the Sanskrit ishiras, " a power-
ful man," the other is the Sanskrit jaran, " an
old man." The list of words on pages 96—100
are disfigured by many such errors ; and, indeed,
the whole purpose for which they are given
shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's philology is
278

JUVENTUS MUNDI

in arrears. The theory of Niebuhr — that the
words common to Greek and Latin, mostly de-
scriptive of peaceful occupations, are Pelasgian
— was serviceable enough in its day, but is now
rendered wholly antiquated by the discovery
that such words are Aryan, in the widest sense.
The Pelasgian theory works very smoothly so
long as we only compare the Greek with the
Latin words, — as, for instance, £vyoz> with ju-
gum ; but when we add the English yoke and
the Sanskrit yugam, it is evident that we have
got far out of the range of the Pelasgoi. But
what shall we say when we find Mr. Gladstone
citing the Latin thalamus in support of this an-
tiquated theory ? Doubtless the word thalamus
is, or should be, significative of peaceful occu-
pations ; but it is not a Latin word at all, except
by adoption. One might as well cite the word
ensemble to prove the original identity or kin-
ship between English and French.

When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the danger-
ous ground of pure and applied philology, con-
fines himself to illustrating the contents of the
Homeric poems, he is always excellent. His
chapter on the " Outer Geography " of the
Odyssey is exceedingly interesting ; showing as
it does how much may be obtained from the
patient and attentive study of even a single
author. Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the sur-
face of the Iliad and Odyssey, so to speak, is
279

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

extensive and accurate. It is when he attempts
to penetrate beneath the surface and survey the
treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth, that
he shows himself unprovided with the talisman
of the wise dervise, which alone can unlock those
mysteries. But modern philology is an exact-
ing science : to approach its higher problems
requires an amount of preparation sufficient to
terrify at the outset all but the boldest ; and
a man who has had to regulate taxation, and
make out financial statements, and lead a polit-
ical party in a great nation, may well be excused
for ignorance of philology. It is difficult enough
for those who have little else to do but to pore
over treatises on phonetics, and thumb their
lexicons, to keep fully abreast with the latest
views in linguistics. In matters of detail one
can hardly ever broach a new hypothesis with-
out misgivings lest somebody, in some weekly
journal published in Germany, may just have
anticipated and refuted it. Yet while Mr. Glad-
stone may be excused for being unsound in
philology, it is far less excusable that he should
sit down to write a book about Homer,
abounding in philological statements, without
the slightest knowledge of what has been
achieved in that science for several years past.
In spite of all drawbacks, however, his book
shows an abiding taste for scholarly pursuits,
and therefore deserves a certain kind of praise.
280

JUVENTUS MUNDI

I hope — though just now the idea savours
of the ludicrous — that the day may some time
arrive when our Congressmen and Secretaries
of the Treasury will spend their vacations in
writing books about Greek antiquities or in
illustrating the meaning of Homeric phrases.

July, 1870.

281

VII
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

NO earnest student of human culture can
as yet have forgotten or wholly out-
lived the feeling of delight awakened
by the first perusal of Max Miiller's brilliant
" Essay on Comparative Mythology," — a
work in which the scientific principles of myth
interpretation, though not newly announced,
were at least brought home to the reader with
such an amount of fresh and striking concrete
illustration as they had not before received.
Yet it must have occurred to more than one
reader that, while the analyses of myths con-
tained in this noble essay are in the main sound
in principle and correct in detail, nevertheless
the author's theory of the genesis of myth is
expressed, and most likely conceived, in a way
that is very suggestive of carelessness and fal-
lacy. There are obvious reasons for doubt-
ing whether the existence of mythology can be
due to any " disease," abnormity, or hyper-
trophy of metaphor in language ; and the criti-
cism at once arises, that with the myth-makers
it was not so much the character of the expres-
282

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

sion which originated the thought, as it was the
thought which gave character to the expression.
It is not that the early Aryans were myth-makers
because their language abounded in metaphor ;
it is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded
in metaphor because the men and women who
spoke it were myth-makers. And they were
myth-makers because they had nothing but the
phenomena of human will and effort with which
to compare objective phenomena. Therefore it
was that they spoke of the sun as an unwearied
voyager or a matchless archer, and classified
inanimate no less than animate objects as mas-
culine and feminine. Max Muller's way of
stating his theory, both in this Essay and in
his later Lectures, affords one among several
instances of the curious manner in which he
combines a marvellous penetration into the
significance of details with a certain looseness
of general conception.1 The principles of philo-

1 «« The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn,
finds out the criminal, was originally quite free from mytho-
logy ; /'/ meant no more than that crime would be brought to
light some day or other. It became mythological, however,
as soon as the etymological meaning of Erinys was forgotten,
and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, assumed the
rank of a personal being." Science of Language, 6th edi-
tion, ii. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is
mine, contains Max Muller's theory in a nutshell. It seems
to me wholly at variance with the facts of history. The facts
concerning primitive culture which are to be cited in this
283

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

logical interpretation are an indispensable aid
to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many
a legend in which the powers of nature are re-
presented in the guise of living and thinking
persons ; but before we can get at the secret of
the myth-making tendency itself, we must leave
philology and enter upon a psychological study.
We must inquire into the characteristics of that
primitive style of thinking to which it seemed
quite natural that the sun should be an un-
erring archer, and the thundercloud a black
demon or gigantic robber finding his richly
merited doom at the hands of the indignant
Lord of Light.

Among recent treatises which have dealt with
this interesting problem, we shall find it advan-
tageous to give especial attention to Mr. Tylor's
" Primitive Culture," * one of the few erudite

paper will show that the case is just the other way. Instead
of the expression " Erinys finds the criminal " being originally
a metaphor, it was originally a literal statement of what was
believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of time,"
( !) but the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally re-
garded as a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do
not talk in metaphors ; they believe in the literal truth of
their similes and personifications, from which, by survival in
culture, our poetic metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's
allusion to a rolling stone as l(rcrvp.€vos, or " yearning " (to
keep on rolling), is to us a mere figurative expression ; but
to the savage it is the description of a fact.

1 Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development
284

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

works which are at once truly great and thor-
oughly entertaining. The learning displayed in
it would do credit to a German specialist, both
for extent and for minuteness, while the orderly
arrangement of the arguments and the elegant
lucidity of the style are such as we are accus-
tomed to expect from French essay-writers.
And what is still more admirable is the way in
which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial
and original speculator is tempered by the pa-
tience and caution of a cool-headed critic. Pa-
tience and caution are nowhere more needed
than in writers who deal with mythology and
with primitive religious ideas ; but these quali-
ties are too seldom found in combination with
the speculative boldness which is required when
fresh theories are to be framed or new paths
of investigation opened. The state of mind in
which the explaining powers of a favourite
theory are fondly contemplated is, to some ex-
tent, antagonistic to the state of mind in which
facts are seen, with the eye of impartial criticism,
in all their obstinate and uncompromising real-
ity. To be able to preserve the balance between
the two opposing tendencies is to give evidence
of the most consummate scientific training. It is
from the want of such a balance that the recent
great work of Mr. Cox is at times so unsatis-

of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom.
By Edward B. Tylor. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1871.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

factory. It may, I fear, seem ill-natured to say
so, but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox way-
lays every available illustration of the physical
theory of the origin of myths has now and then
the curious effect of weakening the reader's con-
viction of the soundness of the theory. For
my own part, though by no means inclined to
waver in adherence to a doctrine once adopted
on good grounds, I never felt so much like
rebelling against the mythologic supremacy of
the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr.
Cox's volumes. That Mr. Tylor, while defend-
ing the same fundamental theory, awakens no
such rebellious feelings, is due to his clear per-
ception and realization of the fact that it is
impossible to generalize in a single formula such
many-sided correspondences as those which
primitive poetry and philosophy have discerned
between the life of man and the life of outward
nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the
elfland of popular fancies, with sole intent to
resolve each episode of myth into some answer-
ing physical event, his only criterion being out-
ward resemblance, cannot be trusted in his con-
clusions, since wherever he turns for evidence
he is sure to find something that can be made
to serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no
household legend or nursery rhyme is safe from
his hermeneutics. " Should he, for instance,
demand as his property the nursery * Song of
286

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

Sixpence,' his claim would be easily established,
• — obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are
the four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that
holds them is the underlying earth covered with
the overarching sky, — how true a touch of
nature it is that when the pie is opened, that is,
when day breaks, the birds begin to sing ; the
King is the Sun, and his counting out his money
is pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower
of Danae ; the Queen is the Moon, and her
transparent honey the moonlight ; the Maid is
the * rosy-fingered ' Dawn, who rises before the
Sun, her master, and hangs out the clouds, his
clothes, across the sky ; the particular black-
bird, who so tragically ends the tale by snipping
off her nose, is the hour of sunrise." In all this
interpretation there is no a priori improbability,
save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and
completeness. That some points, at least, of
the story are thus derived from antique inter-
pretations of physical events, is in harmony
with all that we know concerning nursery
rhymes. In short, "the time-honoured rhyme
really wants but one thing to prove it a sun
myth, that one thing being a proof by some
argument more valid than analogy." The char-
acter of the argument which is lacking may be
illustrated by a reference to the rhyme about
Jack and Jill, explained some time since in the
paper on " The Origins of Folk-Lore." If the
287

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

argument be thought valid which shows these
ill-fated children to be the spots on the moon,
it is because the proof consists, not in the ana-
logy, which is in this case not especially obvious,
but in the fact that in the Edda, and among
ignorant Swedish peasants of our own day, the
story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an
explanation of the moon-spots. To the neglect
of this distinction between what is plausible and
what is supported by direct evidence, is due
much of the crude speculation which encum-
bers the study of myths.

It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of
mythology into the wider inquiry into the char-
acteristic features of the mode of thinking in
which myths originated, that we can best ap-
preciate the practical value of that union of
speculative boldness and critical sobriety which
everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to
meet with a writer who can treat of primitive
religious ideas without losing his head over al-
legory and symbolism, and who duly realizes
the fact that a savage is not a rabbinical com-
mentator, or a cabalist, or a Rosicrucian, but a
plain man who draws conclusions like ourselves,
though with feeble intelligence and scanty know-
ledge. The mystic allegory with which such
modern writers as Lord Bacon have invested
the myths of antiquity is no part of their ori-
ginal clothing, but is rather the late product of
288

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar
to that which we shall perceive to have guided
the myth-makers in their primitive constructions.
The myths and customs and beliefs which, in
an advanced stage of culture, seem meaning-
less save when characterized by some quaintly
wrought device of symbolic explanation, did
not seem meaningless in the lower culture which
gave birth to them. Myths, like words, survive
their primitive meanings. In the early stage the
myth is part and parcel of the current mode of
philosophizing ; the explanation which it offers
is, for the time, the natural one, the one which
would most readily occur to any one thinking
on the theme with which the myth is concerned.
But by and by the mode of philosophizing has
changed ; explanations which formerly seemed
quite obvious no longer occur to any one, but
the myth has acquired an independent substan-
tive existence, and continues to be handed down
from parents to children as something true,
though no one can tell why it is true. Lastly,
the myth itself gradually fades from remem-
brance, often leaving behind it some utterly
unintelligible custom or seemingly absurd su-
perstitious notion. For example, — to recur to
an illustration already cited in a previous pa-
per,— it is still believed here and there by
some venerable granny that it is wicked to kill
robins ; but he who should attribute the belief
289

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

to the old granny's refined sympathy with all
sentient existence would be making one of the
blunders which are always committed by those
who reason a -priori about historical matters
without following the historical method. At an
earlier date the superstition existed in the shape
of a belief that the killing of a robin portends
some calamity ; in a still earlier form the calam-
ity is specified as death ; and again, still earlier,
as death by lightning. Another step backward
reveals that the dread sanctity of the robin is
owing to the fact that he is the bird of Thor,
the lightning god ; and finally we reach that
primitive stage of philosophizing in which the
lightning is explained as a red bird dropping
from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks.
Again, the belief that some harm is sure to
come to him who saves the life of a drowning
man is unintelligible until it is regarded as a
case of survival in culture. In the older form of
the superstition it is held that the rescuer will
sooner or later be drowned himself; and thus
we pass to the fetichistic interpretation of drown-
ing as the seizing of the unfortunate person by
the water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry
at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth
bears a special grudge against the bold mortal
who has thus dared to frustrate him.

The interpretation of the lightning as a red
bird, and of drowning as the work of a smiling
290

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

but treacherous fiend, are parts of that primi-
tive philosophy of nature in which all forces ob-
jectively existing are conceived as identical with
the force subjectively known as volition. It is
this philosophy, currently known as fetichism,
but treated by Mr. Tylor under the somewhat
more comprehensive name of " animism," which
we must now consider in a few of its most con-
spicuous exemplifications. When we have pro-
perly characterized some of the processes which
the untrained mind habitually goes through, we
shall have incidentally arrived at a fair solution
of the genesis of mythology.

Let us first note the ease with which the bar-
baric or uncultivated mind reaches all manner
of apparently fanciful conclusions through reck-
less reasoning from analogy. It is through the
operation of certain laws of ideal association that
all human thinking, that of the highest as well
as that of the lowest minds, is conducted : the
discovery of the law of gravitation, as well as
the invention of such a superstition as the Hand
of Glory, is at bottom but a case of association
of ideas. The difference between the scientific
and the mythologic inference consists solely in
the number of checks which in the former case
combine to prevent any other than the true
conclusion from being framed into a proposi-
tion to which the mind assents. Countless ac-
cumulated experiences have taught the modern
291

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

that there are many associations of ideas which
do not correspond to any actual connection of
cause and effect in the world of phenomena;
and he has learned accordingly to apply to his
newly framed notions the rigid test of verifica-
tion. Besides which the same accumulation of
experiences has built up an organized structure
of ideal associations into which only the less
extravagant newly framed notions have any
chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the
modern savage who is to some extent his coun-
terpart, must reason without the aid of these
multifarious checks. That immense mass of
associations which answer to what are called
physical laws, and which in the mind of the civ-
ilized modern have become almost organic, have
not been formed in the mind of the savage ; nor
has he learned the necessity of experimentally
testing any of his newly framed notions, save
perhaps a few of the commonest. Consequently
there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide
the course of his thought hither or thither, and
the conclusions at which he arrives will be de-
termined by associations of ideas occurring ap-
parently at haphazard. Hence the quaint or
grotesque fancies with which European and bar-
baric folk-lore is filled, in the framing of which
the myth-maker was but reasoning according to
the best methods at his command. To this sim-
plest class, in which the association of ideas is
292

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

determined by mere analogy, belong such cases
as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of wood
in order to soften the heart of the man with
whom he is about to trade for cows, or the Hes-
sian lad who " thinks he may escape the con-
scription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his
pocket, — a symbolic way of repudiating man-
hood." l A similar style of thinking underlies
the mediaeval necromancer's practice of making
a waxen image of his enemy and shooting at it
with arrows, in order to bring about the enemy's
death ; as also the case of the magic rod, men-
tioned in a previous paper, by means of which
a sound thrashing can be administered to an
absent foe through the medium of an old coat
which is imagined to cover him. The principle
involved here is one which is doubtless famil-
iar to most children, and is closely akin to that
which Irving so amusingly illustrates in his
doughty general who struts through a field of
cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth
with his cane, and imagining himself a hero
of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of
caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies
that the breaking of a mirror heralds a death in
the family, — probably because of the destruc-
tion of the reflected human image ; that the
" hair of the dog that bit you " will prevent
hydrophobia if laid upon the wound ; or that

1 Tylor, op. fit. i. 107.
293

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the tears shed by human victims, sacrificed to
mother earth, will bring down showers upon
the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's
remark " that the king had been ill, and that
people generally expected the illness to be fatal,
because the oldest lion in the Tower, about the
king's age, had just died. l So wild and capri-
cious is the human mind,' " observes the ele-
gant letter-writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor
justly remarks, " the thought was neither wild
nor capricious ; it was simply such an argu-
ment from analogy as the educated world has
at length painfully learned to be worthless, but
which, it is not too much to declare, would to
this day carry considerable weight to the minds
of four fifths of the human race." Upon such
symbolism are based most of the practices of
divination and the great pseudo-science of as-
trology. "It is an old story, that when two
brothers were once taken ill together, Hippo-
krates, the physician, concluded from the coin-
cidence that they were twins, but Poseidonios,
the astrologer, considered rather that they were
born under the same constellation ; we may add
that either argument would be thought reason-
able by a savage." So when a Maori fortress is
attacked, the besiegers and besieged look to see
if Venus is near the moon. The moon repre-
sents the fortress ; and if it appears below the
companion planet, the besiegers will carry the
294

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

day, otherwise they will be repulsed. Equally
primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train
of thought on the memorable day at Les Char-
mettes when, being distressed with doubts as to
the safety of his soul, he sought to determine
the point by throwing a stone at a tree. " Hit,
sign of salvation; miss, sign of damnation !"
The tree being a large one and very near at
hand, the result of the experiment was reassur-
ing, and the young philosopher walked away
without further misgivings concerning this mo-
mentous question.1

When the savage, whose highest intellectual
efforts result only in speculations of this child-
like character, is confronted with the phenomena
of dreams, it is easy to see what he will make
of them. His practical knowledge of psychology
is too limited to admit of his distinguishing
between the solidity of waking experience and
what we may call the unsubstantialness of the
dream. He may, indeed, have learned that the
dream is not to be relied on for telling the
truth ; the Zulu, for example, has even reached
the perverse triumph of critical logic achieved
by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that
" dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has
not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned,

1 Rousseau, Confessions, i. vi. For further illustration,
see especially the note on the " doctrine of signatures,"
lufra, p. 75.

295

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

to disregard the utterances of the dream as
being purely subjective phenomena. To the
mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the
visions seen and the voices heard in sleep pos-
sess as much objective reality as the gestures
and shouts of waking hours. When the sav-
age relates his dream, he tells how he saw cer-
tain dogs, dead warriors, or demons last night,
the implication being that the things seen were
objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer
observes, " his rude language fails to state the
difference between seeing and dreaming that he
saw, doing and dreaming that he did. From
this inadequacy of his language it not only re-
sults that he cannot truly represent this differ-
ence to others, but also that he cannot truly
represent it to himself. Hence in the absence
of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and
that of those to whom he tells his adventures,
is that his other self has been away and came
back when he awoke. And this belief, which
we find among various existing savage tribes,
we equally find in the traditions of the early
civilized races."1

Let us consider, for a moment, this assump-
tion of the other self, for upon this is based the
great mass of crude inference which constitutes
the primitive man's philosophy of nature. The

1 Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36,
" The Origin of Animal Worship."
296

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

hypothesis of the other self, which serves to ac-
count for the savage's wanderings during sleep
in strange lands and among strange people,
serves also to account for the presence in his
dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known
to be dead and buried. The other self of the
dreamer meets and converses with the other
selves of his dead brethren, joins with them in
the hunt, or sits down with them to the wild
cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief in an
ever-present world of souls or ghosts, a belief
which the entire experience of uncivilized man
goes to strengthen and expand. The existence
of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly desti-
tute of religious belief has often been hastily
asserted and as often called in question. But
there is no question that, while many savages
are unable to frame a conception so general as
that of godhood, on the other hand no tribe
has ever been found so low in the scale of in-
telligence as not to have framed the concep-
tion of ghosts or spiritual personalities, capable
of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with.
Indeed it is not improbable a priori that the
original inference involved in the notion of the
other self may be sufficiently simple and ob-
vious to fall within the capacity of animals even
less intelligent than uncivilized man. An au-
thentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who,
being accustomed to obtain favours from his
297

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

master by sitting on his haunches, will also sit
before his pet india-rubber ball placed on the
chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump
down and play with him.1 Such a fact as this
is quite in harmony with Auguste Comte's sug-
gestion that such intelligent animals as dogs,
apes, and elephants may be capable of forming
a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of the
terrier here rests upon the assumption that the
ball is open to the same sort of entreaty which
prevails with the master ; which implies, not
that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a
soul, but that in his mind the distinction be-
tween life and inanimate existence has never
been thoroughly established. Just this confu-
sion between things living and things not living
is present throughout the whole philosophy of
fetichism ; and the confusion between things
seen and things dreamed, which suggests the
notion of another self, belongs to this same
twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval
man has not yet clearly demonstrated his im-
measurable superiority to the brutes.2

1 See Nature, vol. vi. p. 262, August i, 1872. The
circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition
that the sitting up is intended to attract the master's attention.
The dog has frequently been seen trying to soften the heart
of the ball, while observed unawares by his master.

2 " We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's atten-
tion Mr. Mark Twain's dog, who ' could n't be depended
on for a special providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog

298

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

The conception of a soul or other self, capa-
ble of going away from the body and returning

of every -day life than is the Skye terrier mentioned by a
certain correspondent of Nature, to whose letter Mr. Fiske
refers. The terrier is held to have had « a few fetichistic
notions,' because he was found standing upon his hind legs in
front of a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball
with which he wished to play, but which he could not reach,
and which, says the letter-writer, he was evidently beseech-
ing to come down and play with him. We consider it more
reasonable to suppose that a dog who had been drilled into a
belief that standing upon his hind legs was very pleasing to
his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to
stand on his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and
whose usual way of getting what he desired was to induce
somebody to get it for him, may have stood up in front of the
mantel-piece rather from force of habit and eagerness of de-
sire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or expected
the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit,
however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of
religion the dog is capable of anything." The Nation, vol.
xv. p. 284, October i, 1872. To be sure, I do not know
for certain what was going on in the dog's mind ; and so,
letting both explanations stand, I will only add another fact
of similar import. " The tendency in savages to imagine
that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or
living essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I
once noticed : my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal,
was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day ; but at a
little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open par-
asol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog
had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the
parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.
He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and
299

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

to it, receives decisive confirmation from the
phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and
ecstasy,1 which occur less rarely among savages,
owing to their irregular mode of life, than
among civilized men. " Further verification,"
observes Mr. Spencer, " is afforded by every
epileptic subject, into whose body, during the
absence of the other self, some enemy has en-
tered; for how else does it happen that the
other self on returning denies all knowledge
of what his body has been doing ? And this
supposition, that the body has been { possessed '
by some other being, is confirmed by the phe-

unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent
cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and
no stranger had a right to be on his territory." Darwin,
Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 64. Without insisting upon all
the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I think,
that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed as-
sociation between motion and a living motor agency ; and that
out of a multitude of just such associations common to both,
the savage, with his greater generalizing power, frames a
truly fetichistic conception.

1 Note the fedchism wrapped up in the etymologies of
these Greek words. Catalepsy, KaraX^is, a seizing of the
body by some spirit or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy,
cKorcuris, a displacement or removal of the soul from the
body, into which the demon enters and causes strange laugh-
ing, crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but the
literal belief in a ghost-world, which has given rise to such
words as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside
himself or transported. ' '

300

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

nomena of somnambulism and insanity." Still
further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we
recollect that savages are very generally unwill-
ing to have their portraits taken, lest a portion
of themselves should get carried off and be ex-
posed to foul play,1 we must readily admit that

1 Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation
of pictures may be seen in young children. I have often been
asked by my three-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain
picture would bite him if he were to go near it ; and I can
remember that, in my own childhood, when reading a book
about insects, which had the formidable likeness of a spider
stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest
my finger should come in contact with the dreaded thing as
I held the book.

With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken,
lest it fall into the hands of some enemy who may injure
him by conjuring with it, may be compared the reluctance
which he often shows toward telling his name, or mentioning
the name of his friend, or king, or tutelar ghost-deity. In
fetichistic thought, the name is an entity mysteriously associ-
ated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its
getting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the
similarly originated fear that the person whose name is spoken
may resent such meddling with his personality. For the latter
reason the Dayak will not allude by name to the small-pox, but
will call it " the chief" or <« jungle-leaves ; " the Laplander
speaks of the bear as the " old man with the fur coat ; " in An-
nam the tiger is called " grandfather " or " Lord ; " while in
more civilized communities such sayings are current as " talk of
the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also com-
pare such expressions as " Eumenides " or " gracious ones "
for the Furies, and other like euphemisms. Indeed, the
3OI

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

the weird reflection of the person and imitation
of the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools
will go far to intensify the belief in the other
self. Less frequent but uniform confirmation
is to be found in echoes, which in Europe
within two centuries have been commonly in-

maxim nil mortuis nisi bonum had most likely at one rime a
fetichistic flavour.

In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above
specified, the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously
"tabu," that common words and even syllables resembling
that name in sound must be omitted from the language.
In New Zealand, where a chief's name was Maripi, or
"knife," it became necessary to call knives nekra ; and in
Tahiti, fetu, " star," had to be changed \r\tofetia, and tut,
" to strike," became tiai, etc., because the king's name was
Tu. Curious freaks are played with the languages of these
islands by this ever-recurring necessity. Among the Kafirs
the women have come to speak a different dialect from the
men, because words resembling the names of their lords or
male relatives are in like manner " tabu." The student of hu-
man culture will trace among such primeval notions the origin
of the Jew's unwillingness to pronounce the name of Jehovah ;
and hence we may perhaps have before us the ultimate source
of the horror with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards such
forms of light swearing — " Mon Dieu," etc. — as are
still tolerated on the continent of Europe, but have disap-
peared from good society in Puritanic England and America.
The reader interested in this group of ideas and customs may
consult Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp. 142, 363 ;
Max Miiller, Science of Language, 6th edition, vol. ii. p.
37 ; Mackay, Religious Development of the Greeks and
Hebrews, vol. i. p. 146.

302

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

terpreted as the voices of mocking fiends or
wood-nymphs, and which the savage might well
regard as the utterances of his other self.

Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schle-
mihl belongs to a widely diffused family of-
legends, which show that a man's shadow has
been generally regarded not only as an entity,
but as a sort of spiritual attendant of the body,
which under certain circumstances it may per-
manently forsake. It is in strict accordance with
this idea that not only in the classic languages,
but in various barbaric tongues, the word for
" shadow " expresses also the soul or other self.
Tasmanians, Algonquins, Central - Americans,
Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are cited by Mr.
Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity
of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen
in dreams ; the Basutos going so far as to
think " that if a man walks on the river-bank, a
crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and
draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick
person is supposed to have his shadow or other
self temporarily detached from his body, and
the convalescent is at times " reproached for
exposing himself before his shadow was safely
settled down in him." If the sick man has been
plunged into stupor, it is because his other self
has travelled away as far as the brink of the
river of death, but not being allowed to cross
has come back and reentered him. And acting
303

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

upon a similar notion the ailing Fiji will some-
times lie down and raise a hue and cry for his
soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr.
Tylor, " in various countries the bringing back
of lost souls becomes a regular part of the sor-
cerer's or priest's profession." * On Aryan soil
we find the notion of a temporary departure of
the soul surviving to a late date in the theory
that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath
while her earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping
at home. The primeval conception reappears,
clothed in bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's reference
to his living contemporaries whose souls he met
with in the vaults of hell, while their bodies
were still walking about on the earth, inhabited
by devils.

The theory which identifies the soul with the
shadow, and supposes the shadow to depart
with the sickness and death of the body, would
seem liable to be attended with some difficul-
ties in the way of verification, even to the dim
intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of
identifying soul and breath is borne out by all
primeval experience. The breath, which really
quits the body at its decease, has furnished the
chief name for the soul, not only to the He-

1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 394. " The Zulus hold
that a dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurte-
nance departed from it at the close of life. " Hard wick, Tra-
ditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, p. 123.

3°4

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

brew, the Sanskrit, and the classic tongues ;
not only to German and English, where geist,
and ghost, according to Max Muller, have the
meaning of "breath," and are akin to such
words as gas, gust, and geyser ; but also to nu-
merous barbaric languages. Among the natives
of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in
West Australia, the soul is described as the
air or breeze which passes in and out through
the nostrils and mouth ; and the Greenlanders,
according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls,
the breath and the shadow. " Among the Sem-
inoles of Florida, when a woman died in child-
birth, the infant was held over her face to re-
ceive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength
and knowledge for its future use. . . . Their
state of mind is kept up to this day among Ty-
rolese peasants, who can still fancy a good man's
soul to issue from his mouth at death like a lit-
tle white cloud." * It is kept up, too, in Lan-
cashire, where a well-known witch died a few
years since ; " but before she could 'shuffle off
this mortal coil ' she must needs transfer her
familiar spirit to some trusty successor. An in-
timate acquaintance from a neighbouring town-
ship was consequently sent for in all haste, and
on her arrival was immediately closeted with
her dying friend. What passed between them
has never fully transpired, but it is confidently

1 Tylor, op. fit. i. 391.
305

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

affirmed that at the close of the interview this
associate received the witch's last breath into her
mouth and with it her familiar spirit. The
dreaded woman thus ceased to exist, but her
powers for good or evil were transferred to her
companion ; and on passing along the road from
Burnley to Blackburn we can point out a farm-
house at no great distance with whose thrifty-
matron no neighbouring farmer will yet dare to
quarrel." 1

Of the theory of embodiment there will be
occasion to speak further on. At present let us
not pass over the fact that the other self is not
only conceived as shadow or breath, which can
at times quit the body during life, but is also
supposed to become temporarily embodied in
the visible form of some bird or beast. In dis-
cussing elsewhere the myth of Bishop Hatto,
we saw that the soul is sometimes represented
in the form of a rat or mouse ; and in treating
of werewolves we noticed the belief that the
spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in the
night-wind, have taken on the semblance of
howling dogs or wolves. " Consistent with these
quaint ideas are ceremonies in vogue in China
of bringing home in a cock (live or artificial)
the spirit of a man deceased in a distant place,
and of enticing into a sick man's coat the de-

1 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867,

p. 2IO.

306

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

parting spirit which has already left his body
and so conveying it back." l In Castren's great
work on Finnish mythology, we find the story
of the giant who could not be killed because
he kept his soul hidden in a twelve-headed
snake which he carried in a bag as he rode on
horseback ; only when the secret was discovered
and the snake carefully killed, did the giant
yield up his life. In this Finnish legend we
have one of the thousand phases of the story
of the " Giant who had no Heart in his Body,"
but whose heart was concealed, for safe keep-
ing, in a duck's egg, or in a pigeon, carefully
disposed in some belfry at the world's end a
million miles away, or encased in a well-nigh
infinite series of Chinese boxes.2 Since, in spite
of all these precautions, the poor giant's heart
invariably came to grief, we need not wonder at
the Karen superstition that the soul is in dan-
ger when it quits the body on its excursions, as
exemplified in countless Indo-European stories

1 Tylor, op. fit.u. 139.

3 In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be em-
bodied in pigeons or crows. " Thus when the Deacon Theo-
dore and his three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681,
the souls of the martyrs, as the « Old Believers ' affirm, ap-
peared in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are
supposed to come back in the spring to their native village
under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and
to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing
parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.

307

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

of the accidental killing of the weird mouse or
pigeon which embodies the wandering spirit.
Conversely it is held that the detachment of
the other self is fraught with danger to the self
which remains. In the philosophy of " wraiths "
and " fetches," the appearance of a double, like
that which troubled Mistress Affery in her wak-
ing dreams of Mr. Flintwinch, has been from
time out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New
Zealand it is ominous to see the figure of an
absent person ; for if it be shadowy and the face
not visible, his death may erelong be expected,
but if the face be seen he is dead already. A
party of Maoris (one of whom told the story)
were seated round a fire in the open air, when
there appeared, seen only by two of them, the
figure of a relative, left ill at home ; they ex-
claimed, the figure vanished, and on the return
of the party it appeared that the sick man had
died about the time of the vision." l The belief
in wraiths has survived into modern times, and
now and then appears in the records of that
remnant of primeval philosophy known as
" spiritualism," as, for example, in the case of
the lady who " thought she saw her own father
look in at the church window at the moment
he was dying in his own house."

The belief in the "death-fetch," like the
doctrine which identifies soul with shadow, is
1 Tylor, op. cit. i. 404.
308

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

instructive as showing that in barbaric thought
the other self is supposed to resemble the ma-
terial self with which it has customarily been
associated. In various savage superstitions the
minute resemblance of soul to body is forcibly
stated. The Australian, for instance, not con-
tent with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right
thumb of the corpse, so that the departed soul
may be incapacitated from throwing a spear.
Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer cruci-
fixion to decapitation, that their souls may not
wander headless about the spirit world.1 Thus
we see how far removed from the Christian
doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the
soul or other self that figures in dreamland. So
grossly materialistic is the primitive conception
that the savage who cherishes it will bore holes
in the coffin of his dead friend, so that the soul
may again have a chance, if it likes, to revisit
the body. To this day, among the peasants in
some parts of Northern Europe, when Odin,
the spectral hunter, rides by attended by his
furious host, the windows in every sickroom
are opened, in order that the soul, if it chooses
to depart, may not be hindered from joining in
the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor,
after the Indians' of North America had spent
a riotous night in singeing an unfortunate cap-
tive to death with firebrands, they would howl

1 Tylor, op. cit. i. 407.
309

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

like the fiends they were, and beat the air with
brushwood, to drive away the distressed and
revengeful ghost. " With a kindlier feeling, the
Congo negroes abstained for a whole year after
a death from sweeping the house, lest the dust
should injure the delicate substance of the
ghost ; " and even now, " it remains a German
peasant saying that it is wrong to slam a door,
lest one should pinch a soul in it." l Dante's
experience with the ghosts in hell and purga-
tory, who were astonished at his weighing down
the boat in which they were carried, is belied
by the sweet German notion " that the dead
mother's coming back in the night to suckle
the baby she has left on earth may be known
by the hollow pressed down in the bed where
she lay." Almost universally ghosts, however
impervious to thrust of sword or shot of pistol,
can eat and drink like Squire Westerns. And
lastly, we have the grotesque conception of souls
sufficiently material to be killed over again, as
in the case of the negro widows who, wishing to
marry a second time, will go and duck them-
selves in the pond, in order to drown the souls

1 Tylor, op. fit. i. 410. In the next stage of survival
this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door,
no reason being assigned ; and in the succeeding stage, when
the child asks why it is naughty to slam a door, he will be
told, because it is an evidence of bad temper. Thus do old-
world fancies disappear before the inroads of the practical
sense.

3IO

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

of their departed husbands, which are supposed
to cling about their necks ; while, according to
the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior
must go through a terrible fight with Samu
and his brethren, in which, if he succeeds, he
will enter Paradise, but if he fails he will be
killed over again and finally eaten by the
dreaded Samu and his unearthly company.

From the conception of souls embodied in
beast forms, as above illustrated, it is not a wide
step to the conception of beast souls which, like
human souls, survive the death of the tangible
body. The widespread superstitions concerning
werewolves and swan-maidens, and the hardly
less general belief in metempsychosis, show that
primitive culture has not arrived at the distinc-
tion attained by modern philosophy between
the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still
more direct evidence is furnished by sundry
savage customs. The Kafir who has killed an
elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it,
and, lest the elephant's soul should still seek
vengeance, he will cut off and bury the trunk,
so that the mighty beast may go crippled to
the spirit land. In like manner the Samoyeds,
after shooting a bear, will gather about the body
offering excuses and laying the blame on the
Russians ; and the American redskin will even
put the pipe of peace into the dead animal's
mouth, and beseech him to forgive the deed.
3"

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

In Assam it is believed that the ghosts of slain
animals will become in the next world the pro-
perty of the hunter who kills them ; and the
Kamtchadales expressly declare that all animals,
even flies and bugs, will live after death, — a
belief which, in our own day, has been indorsed
on philosophical grounds by an eminent liv-
ing naturalist.1 The Greenlanders, too, give
evidence of the same belief by supposing that
when after an exhausting fever the patient
comes up in unprecedented health and vigour,
it is because he has lost his former soul and
had it replaced by that of a young child or a
reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest
fancies of primeval savagery are thinly disguised
in a jargon learned from the superficial reading
of modern books of science, M. Figuier main-
tains that human souls are for the most part the
surviving souls of deceased animals ; in general,
the souls of precocious musical children like
Mozart come from nightingales, while the souls
of great architects have passed into them from
beavers, etc., etc.2

The practice of begging pardon of the animal
one has just slain is in some parts of the world
extended to the case of plants. When the Talein
offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to
cut down, it is obviously because he regards the

1 Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99.

* Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.

3I2

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

tree as endowed with a soul or ghost which in
the next life may need to be propitiated. And
the doctrine of transmigration distinctly includes
plants along with animals among the future ex-
istences into which the human soul may pass.

As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena
of life, though to a much less conspicuous de-
gree, it is not incomprehensible that the savage
should attribute souls to them. But the primi-
tive process of anthropomorphization does not
end here. Not only the horse and dog, the
bamboo, and the oak-tree, but even lifeless ob-
jects, such as the hatchet, or bow and arrows,
or food and drink of the dead man, possess other
selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis
and other contemporary savages, when ques-
tioned, expressly declare that this is their belief.
" If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up,
away flies its soul for the service of the gods."
The Algonquins told Charlevoix that since
hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less than
men and women, it follows, of course, that these
shadows (or souls) must pass along with human
shadows (or souls) into the spirit land. In this
we see how simple and consistent is the logic
which guides the savage, and how inevitable is
the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our
minds so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail
throughout the barbaric world. However ab-
surd the belief that pots and kettles have souls

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

may seem to us, it is nevertheless the only
belief which can be held consistently by the
savage to whom pots and kettles, no less than
human friends or enemies, may appear in his
dreams ; who sees them followed by shadows as
they are moved about ; who hears their voices,
dull or ringing, when they are struck ; and who
watches their doubles fantastically dancing in the
water as they are carried across the stream.1 To
minds, even in civilized countries, which are
unused to the severe training of science, no
stronger evidence can be alleged than what is
called " the evidence of the senses ; " for it is
only long familiarity with science which teaches
us that the evidence of the senses is trustworthy
only in so far as it is correctly interpreted by rea-
son. For the truth of his belief in the ghosts of
men and beasts, trees and axes, the savage has
undeniably the evidence of his senses which
have so often seen, heard, and handled these
other selves.

The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races
freshly illustrate this crude philosophy, and re-
ceive fresh illustration from it. On the primi-

1 Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes
in to complete the proof. " Mr. Darwin saw two Malay
women in Keeling Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed
in clothes like a doll ; this spoon had been carried to the grave
of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact
Junatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a hat at a
modern spirit-seance." Tylor, op. fit. ii. 139.

3*4

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

tive belief in the ghostly survival of persons
and objects rest the almost universal custom of
sacrificing the wives, servants, horses, and dogs
of the departed chief of the tribe, as well as of
presenting at his shrine sacred offerings of food,
ornaments, weapons, and money. Among the
Kayans the slaves who are killed at their master's
tomb are enjoined to take great care of their
master's ghost, to wash and shampoo it, and to
nurse it when sick. Other savages think that
ff all whom they kill in this world shall attend
them as slaves after death," and for this reason
the thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until lately would
not allow their young men to marry until they
had acquired some post-mortem property by pro-
curing at least one human head. It is hardly
necessary to do more than allude to the Fiji cus-
tom of strangling all the wives of the deceased
at his funeral, or to the equally well-known
Hindu rite of suttee. Though, as Wilson has
shown, the latter rite is not supported by any
genuine Vedic authority, but only by a shame-
less Brahmanic corruption of the sacred text,
Mr. Tylor is nevertheless quite right in arguing
that unless the horrible custom had received the
sanction of a public opinion bequeathed from
pre-Vedic times, the Brahmans would have had
no motive for fraudulently reviving it ; and this
opinion is virtually established by the fact of
the prevalence of widow sacrifice among Gauls,

315

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Scandinavians, Slavs, and other European Ar-
yans.1 Though under English rule the rite has
been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaic senti-
ments which so long maintained it are not yet
extinct. Within the present year there has ap-
peared in the newspapers a not improbable story
of a beautiful and accomplished Hindu lady
who, having become the wife of a wealthy Eng-
lishman, and after living several years in Eng-
land amid the influences of modern society,
nevertheless went off and privately burned
herself to death soon after her husband's de-
cease.

The reader who thinks it far-fetched to in-
terpret funeral offerings of food, weapons, orna-
ments, or money, on the theory of object souls,
will probably suggest that such offerings may
be mere memorials of affection or esteem for
the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to
be in many countries after surviving the phase
of culture in which they originated ; but there
is ample evidence to show that at the outset
they were presented in the belief that their
ghosts would be eaten or otherwise employed
by the ghost of the dead man. The stout club
which is buried with the dead Fiji sends its soul
along with him that he may be able to defend
himself against the hostile ghosts which will lie
1 Tylor, op. fit. i. 414-422.

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

in ambush for him on the road to Mbulu, seek-
ing to kill and eat him. Sometimes the club is
afterwards removed from the grave as of no
further use, since its ghost is all that the dead
man needs. In like manner, " as the Greeks
gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll,
and the old Prussians furnished him with spend-
ing money, to buy refreshment on his weary
journey, so to this day German peasants bury
a corpse with money in his mouth or hand,"
and this is also said to be one of the regular
ceremonies of an Irish wake. Of similar pur-
port were the funeral feasts and oblations of
food in Greece and Italy, the "rice-cakes made
with ghee " destined for the Hindu sojourning
in Yama's kingdom, and the meat and gruel
offered by the Chinaman to the manes of his
ancestors. " Many travellers have described the
imagination with which the Chinese make such
offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead
consume the impalpable essence of the food,
leaving behind its coarse material substance,
wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out
sumptuous feasts for ancestral souls, allow them
a proper time to satisfy their appetite, and then
fall to themselves." 1 So in the Homeric sacri-
fice to the gods, after the deity has smelled the
sweet savour and consumed the curling steam
1 Tylor, op. tit. i. 435, 446 ; ii. 30, 36.

31?

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

that rises ghost-like from the roasting viands,
the assembled warriors devour the remains.1

Thus far the course of fetichistic thought
which we have traced out, with Mr. Tylor's aid,
is such as is not always obvious to the modern
inquirer without considerable concrete illustra-
tion. The remainder of the process, resulting
in that systematic and complete anthropomor-
phization of nature which has given rise to
mythology, may be more succinctly described.
Gathering together the conclusions already ob-
tained, we find that daily or frequent experience
of the phenomena of shadows and dreams has
combined with less frequent experience of the
phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to
generate in the mind of uncultured man the
notion of a twofold existence appertaining alike
to all animate or inanimate objects : as all alike
possess material bodies, so all alike possess
ghosts or souls. Now when the theory of ob-
ject souls is expanded into a general doctrine
of spirits, the philosophic scheme of animism is
completed. Once habituated to the conception
of souls of knives and tobacco pipes passing
to the land of ghosts, the savage cannot avoid
carrying the interpretation still further, so that
wind and water, fire and storm, are accredited
with indwelling spirits akin by nature to the soul

1 According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the soul
yf the eye is eaten by demons. Id. ii. 353.

318

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

which inhabits the human frame. That the
mighty spirit or demon by whose impelling will
the trees are rooted up and the storm-clouds
driven across the sky should resemble a freed
human soul, is a natural inference, since uncul-
tured man has not attained to the conception of
physical force acting in accordance with uniform
methods, and hence all events are to his mind
the manifestations of capricious volition. If the
fire burns down his hut, it is because the fire is
a person with a soul, and is angry with him, and
needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by
means of prayer or sacrifice. Thus the savage
has a priori no alternative but to regard fire-
soul as something akin to human-soul ; and in
point of fact we find that savage philosophy
makes no distinction between the human ghost
and the elemental demon or deity. This is suf-
ficiently proved by the universal prevalence of
the worship of ancestors. The essential princi-
ple of manes worship is that the tribal chief or
patriarch, who has governed the community
during life, continues also to govern it after
death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile
tribes, rewarding brave warriors, and punishing
traitors and cowards. Thus from the concep-
tion of the living king we pass to the notion of
what Mr. Spencer calls " the god-king," and
thence to the rudimentary notion of deity.
Among such higher savages as the Zulus, the
3*9

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

doctrine of divine ancestors has been devel-
oped to the extent of recognizing a first ances-
tor, the Great Father, Unkulunkulu, who made
the world. But in the stratum of savage thought
in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the
most part based, we find no such exalted spec-
ulation. The ancestors of the rude Veddas and
of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris (patres,
" fathers "), and the Roman manes have become
elemental deities which send rain or sunshine,
health or sickness, plenty or famine, and to
which their living offspring appeal for guidance
amid the vicissitudes of life.1 The theory of
embodiment, already alluded to, shows how
thoroughly the demons which cause disease are
identified with human and object souls. In
Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which creeps

1 The following citation is interesting as an illustration of
the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to
Christian saint-worship : " It is well known that Romulus,
mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death
a Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young
children, so that nurses and mothers would carry sickly in-
fants to present them in his little round temple at the foot
of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by the
church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middle-
ton, who drew public attention to its curious history, used to
look in and see ten or a dozen women, each with a sick
child in her lap, sitting in silent reverence before the altar of
the saint. The ceremony of blessing children, especially
after vaccination, may still be seen there on Thursday
ings." Op. (it. ii. HI.

320

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

up into the liver of the impious wretch who has
ventured to pronounce his name; while con-
versely in the well-known European theory of
demoniacal possession, it is a fairy from elfland,
or an imp from hell, which has entered the
body of the sufferer. In the close kinship, more-
over, between disease possession and oracle pos-
session, where the body of the Pythia, or the
medicine-man, is placed under the direct control
of some great deity,1 we may see how by insen-
sible transitions the conception of the human
ghost passes into the conception of the spiritual
numen, or divinity.

To pursue this line of inquiry through the
countless nymphs and dryads and nixies of the
higher nature-worship up to the Olympian
divinities of classic polytheism, would be to en-
ter upon the history of religious belief, and in
so doing to lose sight of our present purpose,

1 Want of space prevents me from remarking at length
.upon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of
oracular inspiration. Attention should be called, however,
to the brilliant explanation of the importance accorded by all
religions to the rite of fasting. Prolonged abstinence from
food tends to bring on a mental state which is favourable to
visions. The savage priest or medicine-man qualifies himself
for the performance of his duties by fasting, and where this
is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs ; whence the
sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice.
The practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance
of survival.

321

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

which has merely been to show by what mental
process the myth-maker can speak of natural
objects in language which implies that they are
animated persons. Brief as our account of this
process has been, I believe that enough has
been said, not only to reveal the inadequacy of
purely philological solutions (like those con-
tained in Max Miiller's famous Essay) to ex-
plain the growth of myths, but also to exhibit
the vast importance for this purpose of the kind
of psychological inquiry into the mental habits
of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably con-
ducted. Indeed, however lacking we may still
be in points of detail, I think we have already
reached a very satisfactory explanation of the
genesis of mythology. Since the essential char-
acteristic of a myth is that it is an attempt to
explain some natural phenomenon by endowing
with human feelings and capacities the senseless
factors in the phenomenon, and since it has
here been shown how uncultured man, by the
best use he can make of his rude common sense,
must inevitably come, and has invariably come,
to regard all objects as endowed with souls, and
all nature as peopled with supra-human entities
shaped after the general pattern of the human
soul, I am inclined to suspect that we have
got very near to the root of the whole matter.
We can certainly find no difficulty in seeing
why a waterspout should be described in the
322

THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

" Arabian Nights " as a living demon : " The
sea became troubled before them, and there
arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards
the sky, and approaching the meadow, . . . and
behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stature." We
can see why the Moslem camel-driver should
find it most natural to regard the whirling
simoom as a malignant Jinni ; we may under-
stand how it is that the Persian sees in bodily
shape the scarlet fever as " a blushing maid with
locks of flame and cheeks all rosy red ; " and
we need not consider it strange that the pri-
meval Aryan should have regarded the sun as
a voyager, a climber, or an archer, and the
clouds as cows driven by the wind-god Hermes
to their milking. The identification of William
Tell with the sun becomes thoroughly intelli-
gible ; nor can we be longer surprised at the con-
ception of the howling night-wind as a ravenous
wolf. When pots and kettles are thought to
have souls that live hereafter, there is no diffi-
culty in understanding how the blue sky can
have been regarded as the sire of gods and men.
And thus, as the elves and bogarts of popular
lore are in many cases descended from ancient
divinities of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in
turn must acknowledge their ancestors in the
shadowy denizens of the primeval ghost-world.

August, 1872.

323

NOTE

THE following are some of the modern works most likely
to be of use to the reader who is interested in the legend of
William Tell.

HISELY, J. J. Dissertatio historica inauguralis de Gulielmo
Tellio, etc. Groningae, 1824.

IDELER, J. L. Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell. Ber-
lin, 1836.

HAUSSER, L. Die Sage vom Tell aufs Neue kritisch un-
tersucht. Heidelberg, 1840.

HISELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur Phistoire de Guil-
laume Tell. Lausanne, 1843.

LIEBENAU, H. Die Tell-Sage zu dem Jahre 1230 his-
torisch nach neuesten Quellen. Aarau, 1 864.

VISCHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstatte,
etc. Nebst einer Beilage : das alteste Tellenschauspiel.
Leipzig, 1867.

BORDIER, H. L. Le Griitli et Guillaume Tell, ou defense
de la tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confedera-
tion suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1 869.

The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant 1'ori-
gine de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, I 869.

RILLIET, A. Les origines de la confederation suisse r^his-
toire et legende. 2e ed., revue et corrigee. Geneve
et Bale, 1869.

The same. Lettre a M. Henri Bordier a propos de sa
defense de la tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la
confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869.

HUNGERBUHLER, H. Etude critique sur les traditions re-
latives aux origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve
et Bale, 1 869.

3*5

NOTE

MEYER, KARL. Die Tellsage. [/» Bartsch, Germanis-
tische Studien, i. 159—170.] Wien, 1872.

See, also, the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps, 18
Feb., 1868 ; by M. Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire,
1868 ; by M. de Wiss, in the Journal de Geneve, 7 July,
1868 ; also Revue critique, 17 July, 1869 ; Journal de
Geneve, 24 Oct., 1868 ; Gazette de Lausanne, feuilleton
litteraire, 2—5 Nov., 1868, " Les origines de la confederation
suisse," par M. Secretan ; Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1869,
" The Legend of Tell and Riitli."

INDEX

INDEX

ABGOTT, significance of the word,
142.

Achaians, in the Homeric poems,
243 ; in the historic period, 243.

Achilleis, Crete's theory of, 253.

Achilleus, Greek form of the San-
skrit Aharyu, 27, l64n. ; his
spear a solar weapon, 32. ; as a
sun-myth, 33, 152, 267,272;
the Wrath of, considered as a
structural part of the Iliad, 252-
256 ; not conceived of by Homer
as an ordinary mortal, 260 ; his
part in the Iliad, 261, 262;
known in Aryana-vaedjo, 263 ;
his parallel in the Rig-Veda, 265.

Adeva, 164.

Aditi, in the Rig-Veda, 142, 149.

Adonis, pierced by winter as a boar's
tusk, 33 ; a Semitic divinity, 276.

yEsop's fables, La Fontaine's bor-
rowed from, 8.

Agamemnon, his part in the Iliad
structurally considered, 253—255 ;
compared with Charlemagne,
270-272. _

Agassiz, Louis, on the belief that
animals will live after death, in
Essay on Classification, 312.

Agni, as patron of marriage, 88 ;
contradiction in the Aryan con-
ception of, 149.

Ahana, the Sanskrit form of the
Greek Athene, 26.

Aharyu, Sanskrit form of the Greek
Achilleus, 27, 16411. ; in the
Rig-Veda solar myth, 265.

Ahi, a personification of the storm-
cloud, 78, 155, i6oj charac-

teristics of, retained by the Devil,
168.

Ahmed, arrow of, 58 j fairy pavil-
ion of, 67.

Ahriman, as represented in the
Zendavesta, 164, 165 ; how re-
lated to Satan, 165-167.

Ahuramazda in the Zendavesta, 165.

Aias not conceived of by Homer as
an ordinary mortal, 261.

Aimoin, on the Prankish explana-
tion of the word Darast in De
Gestis Francorum, 97.

Aineias, as the sun, 151 ; not con-
ceived of by Homer as an ordinary
mortal, 261.

Aladdin, ring of, 60 ; and the roc's
egg, 68.

Aleian land as the sky, 67.

Alexandrian library, burning of by
Omar, an untrustworthy tradition,
20.

Alexikakos, epithet of Herakles,
159.

Algonquin-Lenape have partial dis-
tinction between animate and in-
animate in their language, 24 n.

Allegorical interpretation of myths
inadequate, 28, 288.

Altdorf, Tell's lime-tree at, a.

Ambrosia, 86.

American myths, 206—215, 229 ;
their resemblance to Aryan myths,
206, 213 ; absence of a certain
class of dawn-myths in, 213—
215.

Amrita or water of life, 86.

Analogical reasoning among barbari-
ans, 291 ; examples of, 293.

329

INDEX

Anaxagoras, his idea of the moon, 25.

Ancestor - worship, connected with
the feeling of metempsychosis,
1 02, 1 06 ; the oldest systema-
tized form of fetichistic religion,
loz ; among the Hindus, lozn. ;
in China, 103 ; a portion of Brah-
manism, 103 ; in the Vedic reli-
gion, 103 j rudimentary notion
of deity developed from, 319; be-
came worship of elemental deities,
3*°-

Angels, related to the Valkyries, the
Apsaras, and the Houris, 139.

Animals, supposed by savages to have
souls, 311; instances of the belief,
311, 3125 belief that they will
live after death, 312.

Animate and inanimate in primitive
philosophy, 24, 298.

Animism and myth-making, 291,
318.

Anro-mainyas in the Zendavesta,
164.

Antigone in the Oidipous-myth,

155-

Antiquity of man, 238.

Antwerp, origin and legend of the
name, 98.

Aphrodite, as the moon in ancient
mythology, 25 ; as Ursula of Ger-
man mythology, 38 ; Hephaistos
and, 88 n. ; in pre-Homeric,
Homeric, and post-Homeric times,
256, 257 ; a Greek divinity with
attributes of the Semitic Astarte,
275.

Apollo, and Laomedon, 32 ; and his
lyre, classed among wind-myths,
44 ; and his cattle, 47 ; derived
by Gladstone from the Hebrew
Messiah, 274 ; and Athene, the
highest types of divinity among
the Greeks, 274, 275.

Apsaras, the clouds so called in San-
skrit, 131; identical with the
Valkyries, 139; related to the
Mussulman Houris, 1 39.

Arabian Nights, the Jinni's soul in,

14 n. ; Hassan of El-Basrah in,
17 n. ; feather dresses in, 135 n. ;
Queen Labe in, 1510.; water-
spout as demon in, 322.

Argives, in the Homeric poems,
243 ; in the historic period, 243.

Argo and the Symplegades, 73.

Argonauts, the myth of, 180.

Argos, the, of the Iliad-myth, 273.

Aristotle on the date of the Homeric
poems, 244.

Arkadians, etymologically "the
children of light," loo.

Arktoi, the Greek name of the con-
stellation Great Bear, 99.

Armida's gardens, 41.

Artemis, in ancient mythology, 25 ;
as Ursula in German mythology,
38.

Aryana F'aedjo, a projected work,
1 66 n.

Aryan folk-lore, correspondence in,
18, 19.

Aryan immigration into Europe,
266.

Aryan language, has been partly re-
constructed, 237; its stage of de-
velopment at time of break-up of
tribal communities, 237.

Aryans, Tell legend known to, while
in Central Asia, 7 ; their first
conception of a Divine Power
suggested by the Sun, 147 ; their
earliest religion not a monotheism,
147, 148 ; their conception of the
gods, vague and unsystematized,
148-150 ; their personifications
and conceptions of the Sun, 149-
156 5 as myth-makers, 283.

Ash, as a lightning-tree, 74 ; ety-
mology of, connects it with spear
and arrow, 75 n. ; therapeutic
properties of, 83 ; avoidance of,
by snakes, 83 ; first man made
of, in Norse mythology, 88 ;
as a love-charm, 89 n.

Asmodeus and the schamir, 58.

Ass, story of the enchanted, 138.

Association of ideas variously illus-

330

INDEX

trated in scientific and in barbaric

thought, 291.

Astarte as rising from the sea, 33.
Astrology based on primitive analogy,

294.

Astyages, a mythical creation, I54n.
Asuras churning the ocean, 85.
Asvins, American parallel of, 211 n.
Atavism explained in the Middle

Ages as diabolical metamorphosis,

115, 116.
Athene, the Greek form of the

Sanskrit Ahana, 26 ; derived by

Gladstone from the Logos, 274 ;

and Apollo, the highest types of

deity among the Greeks, 274,

ayS-
Athenians, personification of the sky

by, 24 ; personification of the

moon by, 25.
Attic dramatists and dawn-myths,

214.
Austria, Duke of, and the rebellion

of the Swiss, 2.
Australian idea of departed souls,

309.
Autolykos, meaning of the word,

97-

Auvergne, werewolf case in, 124.
Aymar, Jacques, 51, 54.
Azidahaka, 1 54 n.

Baba Abdallah, ointment of, 58, 79.

Babel, real and false etymology of,
98 n.

Bacon, Francis, Lord, his allegorical
interpretation of myths, 288.

Baga, of the Cuneiform Inscriptions,
141.

Bagaios, epithet of Zeus, 141.

Balder, slain by winter as a sprig of
mistletoe, 34.

Banier, Abbe, his false theory of the
character of myths, 20.

Barbaric languages, have no com-
mon ancestor, 201, 203 ; neither
widespread nor durable, 202.

Barbarossa, Frederic, his sleep as a
winter myth, 35, 272.

Baring-Gould, Sabine, on the belief
in werewolves, 96 ; on homicidal
insanity, no; his reduction of
legends to story-roots, 156 n. ;
his Book of Werewolves, on
thunder and snow-myths, 65 n. ;
on the Hindu storm-wind, 1 06 ;
on cannibalism, 1 1 1— 1 14 j on
the significance of the word Leich-
nam, 138 n. ; his Curious Myths
of the Middle Ages, on supersti-
tions, 23 ; on winter-myths, 35 n. ;
on legend of Tannhauser, 39 ; on
story of Aymar, 54; on light-
ning as serpents, 70 n. ; on story
of Melusina, 132 n. ; on swan-
maidens, 222 n. ; his Legends of
the Patriarchs and Prophets, on
building of Solomon's Temple,
59 n. ; on deluge-myths, 206 ;
his Silver Store, on the luck-
flower, 56.

Bazra, meaning of the word, 97.

Beauty and the Beast, the story of,
*34 n-

Bedivere, Sir, his brand Excalibur a
solar weapon, 32.

Bedreddin Hassan, purse of, 89.

Belisarius, story of his blindness an
untrustworthy tradition, 19.

Bellerophon, as the sun in ancient
mythology, 25, 150; arrows of,
31, 78, 79 ; in the Aleian land,
67 ; and Anteia, myth of, and
that of Joseph and Zuleikha, re-
semblance between, 277.

Benaiah and the schamir, 58.

Berserkers, our substitutes for, 108 ;
the madness of, 108, 109, 122.

Beth Gellert, shown as the grave of
Llewellyn's dog, 9 ; name de-
rived from St. Celert, 9 n.

Bhaga, in Old Aryan, 141 ; the
Aryan conception of, 141, 149.

Bible, the story of the serpent in,
1 66 ; Satan in, r 66, 167.

Birds, as bearers of rock-splitting
talismans, 59, 60, 69 ; as clouds,
68.

331

INDEX

Bleek, W. H. I., his Hottentot
Fables and Tales, on the story
of the Leopard and the Ram,
1770.5 on moon-myths, 219;
on the werewolf-myth, 223 n. ;
on cannibals, 228.

Blue-Beard and lightning - myths,
81 n.

Boabdil, King, his sleep a winter-
myth, 35.

Bog, the Slavonic, 141-143.

Bogie, the origin of, 141-143.

Boots, the crafty, 12 ; as a wind-
myth, 48 ; who ate a Match with
the Troll, story of, 177.

Bordier, H. L., in Tell bibliography,
325.

Brahman and goat, story of, 16.

Breal, Michel, prefatory note on,
vii ; on dogs as psychopomps,
47 ; his Hercule et Cacus, 150 n.,
157-

Breath, identified with soul, 304.

Brebeuf, Jean de, and Iroquois super-
stitions, 212.

Bridge of the Dead, myth of, 205.

Brinton, D. G., his Myths of the
Ne<w World, on fire-myth of
Sioux Indians, 84 ; on American
myths, 206-214; on Ca"b light-
ning-myth, 229 n.

Briseis, Greek form of the Sanskrit
Brisaya, 27 ; her parallel in the
Rig- Veda, 265.

Brown, Robert, his Poseidon, 276 n. ;
no Polyphemos's eye, 72 n.

Browning, Robert, his Pied Piper
of Hamelin, 42.

Brunehault, Brunhild or Brynhild
possibly drawn from, 272.

Brynhild, 1 80 ; and Sigurd, a solar
myth, 1 8 1 ; how far a personifi-
cation, 272.

Buckle, H. T., on the Devil, in
History of Civilization, 169 n.

Bug-a-boo, the origin of, 141-143.

Bugbear, the origin of, 141-143.

Bunsen, C. K. J., Philosophy of
Universal History, 97.

Burnouf, Eugene, his Bhaga-vata
Purana, on Sanskrit myth-tellers,
72 n. ; on the Indra legend,
161 n.

Byrsa, Greek word for hide, con-
founded with Bazra, 97.

Cacus, Hercules and, explained as a
sun-myth, 157—164; the name,
corrupted from Caseins, 159 ; a
kinsman of Orthros and Kerberos,
1 60.

Caddo, no distinction between ani-
mate and inanimate in language
of, 24 n.

Czcius, the original form of Cacus,
159.

Cain as placed in the moon by Dante,
36.

Calender, one-eyed, tale of, founded
on lightning-myth, 81.

Callaway, Henry, his Zulu Nursery
Tales, on the chark, 85 n. ; on
cannibals, 224, 227, 228.

Campbell, Lord Archibald, on Trolls,
in Tales of the West Highlands,
176 n.

Cannibalism, cases of, hi modern
civilized communities, 111-115.

Cannibals of Zulu legends, origin of,
224 ; myths of, 225.

Captain of the Phantom Ship, place
of the story among myths, 36.

Cardinal points, primitive worship of,
217 n.

Carib lightning-myth, 229.

Carlovingian romance compared with
Iliad-myth, 269-272.

^arvara, Sanskrit form of the Greek
Kerberos, 27, 1 68.

Caseburg, case of werewolf trans-
formation near, 123.

Cassim Baba, 57.

Castren, M. A., found Tell legend
in Finland, 6 ; on the soul as
embodied in animals, 307.

Catequil, Peru thunder-god, 89 n.

Cat-women, 125 n.

Catalepsy, fetichism and, 300.

332

INDEX

Catalogue of Ships, the arrangement

of, 248.
Cattle, of Hercules, 157, 1 60 ; as

clouds, 161, 1 80.
Celestinus and the Miller's Horse,

the tale of, 169 n.
Ceylon, moon-myth of, 218.
Chalons, the cannibalistic tailor of,

in.
Chamisso, Adelbert von, his Peter

Schlemihl, 303.
Changelings, the belief in, was an

attempt to explain the obscure

phenomena of mental disease,

117-119.
Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures,

75-

Charis in the Homeric poems and
later, 256, 257.

Charites, the, 257.

Chark, description of, 84 ; is still in
use, 85.

Charlemagne of romance, the, 269—
272.

Charon's ferry-boat as a cloud, in
primitive Aryan lore, 66.

Chateau Vert, corrupted into Shot-
over, 98.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, tales of, adopted
from Boccaccio, 8 ; his myth of
the Man in the Moon, 36.

Cherokee have partial distinction be-
tween animate and inanimate in
their language, 24 n.

Chesterfield, P. D. Stanhope, Lord,
his remark on the capriciousness
of the human mind, 294.

Chimaira, relationship of, 155.

Chinese, their version of the Gellert
story, 9 ; their description of the
roc, 68 n. ; their idea of departed
souls, 306, 309.

Chios, its claim to be the birthplace
of Homer, 241 j home of Ho-
merids, 247.

Choctaws, no distinction between
animate and inanimate in language
of, 24 n.

Cinderella, 177.

Clerk and the Image, tale of the,

79-

Cloud-myths appear in all countries,
205.

Clouds, as cows in ancient mythology,
25 ; as sheep, 25 ; as swan-
maidens, 25, 131, 1395 as moun-
tains or rocks, 25, 73 ; as Val-
kyries, 25, 1 80 ; as ships, 66,
131 ; as psychopomps, 66 ; as
birds, 67—72, 131 ; as cattle,
161, 1 80 } as the Golden Fleece,
1 80.

Codadad and his brethren, the tale of,
a sun-myth, 181.

Colenso, J. W., on the Pentateuch,
98 n.

Comte, Auguste, on fetichistic no-
tions in animals, 298.

Cows, as clouds, 25 ; as psycho-
pomps, 66. See Cattle.

Cox, G. W., on the tellers of old
tales, 1 8 ; on the belief in were-
wolves, 96, 100, 120 ; on the
Lykaon myth, 96, 100 ; on the
Berserker madness, 122 n. ; his
scepticism and dogmatism, 122 n.;
on the legend of the Herakleids,
242 ; on Poseidon, 276 n. ; his
Mythology of the Aryan Nations,
1 2 n. ; on Cyrus, 1 54 ; on the
devil, 1 69 n. , 1 70 ; on the Iliad,
261 ; on the Odyssey, 266 ; his
Manual of Mythology on the
grove of the Erinyes, 155 ; his
Tales of Ancient Greece on the
Iliad and Odyssey, 266 ; his
methods criticised, 285.

Cranz, David, on the Greenlanders*
idea of the soul, 305.

Criminals, detection of, by the
divining-rod, 55 ; in myths, 77,
283 n.

Criticism, modern, and William Tell,
i.

Cross, fragments of the true, as valid

proofs, 2.

lulotte-Verte, the story of, a sun-
myth, 181.

333

INDEX

Cushna in the Rig-Veda, 160.
Cyrus, how far mythical, 1 54 n. ; a
solar hero, 268.

Dagon in ancient mythology, 25.

Dahana, the Dawn, 154.

Danaos, daughters of, and the rainy
sky, 66.

Danish account of William Tell,
4-6.

Dante Alighieri, places Cain as the
Man in the Moon, 36 ; on souls
of earthly bodies in hell, 304.

Daphne, the dawn, 154.

Daras, the town, the Prankish ex-
planation of the word, 97.

Darwin, C. R., the chark in Nat-
uralist's Voyage, 85 n. ; on the
dog and the parasol in Descent of
Man, 298 n.

Dasent, Sir G. W., prefatory note
on, vii } on Tell legend among
Turks and Mongolians, 6 ; on
the Berserker madness, 109 n. ;
his tale of the white bear that
marries a young girl, 133, 134;
his Prose Edda on Freyr's cloud-
ship, 67 n. ; his Burnt Njal on
witchcraft, 107 n. ; his Popular
Tales from the Norse on Not a Pin
to choose between them, 173 n. ;
on Trolls, I76n.

Dasyu, night demon, 153.

Davy's locker, 169.

Dawn as detecting crime, 78,
283 n.

Dawn-myths, 153, 155 ; Ameri-
can, 213 ; Aryan, 214. See also
Erinys.

Daybreak-myths, resemblance be-
tween lightning-myths and, 78.

Death, savages' idea of, 102.

Decius and the Seven Sleepers, 35.

Delepierre, Octave, Historical Diffi-
culties, 4.

Deluge-myths, origin of, 205.

Demainetos, story of, 94.

Demon, the application of, 142.

Descent of Fire, the, 50-93.

Deulin, Charles, on Gambrinus, in
Contes d"un Bu-veur de Biere,
175 n.

Devas churning the ocean, 85.

Devil, and the walnut, as a wind-
myth, 48 ; derivation and history
of the word, 143, 144 5 the
mediaeval conception of, 167-
1 69 ; as represented by the Scotch
divines of the seventeenth century,
169 ; mediaeval legends concern-
ing, 169-175. See Satan.

Dewel, gypsy name for God, 143 n.

Dido, and the ox-hides, 97 ; her
part in the sun-myth, 151.

Dietrich, how far historical, 272.

Dieu, derivation of the word, 143 n.,

'45-

Digamma, in the Homeric poems,
248.

Diocletian's ostrich, story of, men-
tioned, 59 n.

Diodorus Siculus, 158.

Diomedes not conceived of by
Homer as an ordinary mortal,
261, 262.

Dionysos imitated by the Devil,
168.

Dioskouroi, American parallel of,
211 n.

Divination based on primitive anal-
ogy, 294.

Divining-rod, used to find water in
an American village, 50—55 ;
as symbolic of lightning, in find-
ing water, 55, 77, 162 ; in
cleaving rocks, 55, 74, 162 ;
in detecting criminals, 55, 77;
in finding hidden treasure, 55,
74, 77, 87 ; must be forked,
74, 87 ; in curing disease, 8 1 j
in bringing down fire, 84 ; as the
wish-rod, 89.

Doctrine of signatures, 295 n.

Dog which appeared in Faust's
study, 1 68.

Dogs, howling of, 47, 104 ; as the
wind bearing away souls, 47,
104 ; as a psychopomp in Persia

334

INDEX

and India, 47 n., 104 ; how far
capable of fetichistic notions, 297.

Don Carlos and Queen Elizabeth,
30.

Don Juan, his prototype the Sun,

ISO-
Don Sebastian of Portugal, his sleep

as a winter-myth, 35.
Donaldson, J. W., on the word

Babel, in Neia Cratylus, 98 n.
Dorians, date of their conquest of

Peloponnesos, 242—244, 259 ; as

known to Homer, 243 ; in the

historical period, 243.
Dousterswivel, 51.
Dreams, primitive philosophy of,

295, 318.
Drowning, superstitions in regard to,

290.

Durandal, a solar weapon, 32.
Dyaks of Borneo, post-mortem pro-

perty of, 315.
Dyaus, the meaning of, and the

form in cognate languages, 26,

67, 145-147, 149, 267 ; yielded

as a deity to Brahma and Vishnu,

Earth, symbols of, in mythology,

233, 234; in the hypotheses of

Plato and Kepler, 234.
Echidna, a personification of the

storm-cloud, 78, 160 ; charac-

teristics of, retained by the Devil,

168.

Echoes, other self in, 302.
Ecstasy, fetichism in, 300, 318.
Edda, the prose, the story of Prodi's

quern in, 89 ; the composition

of, 249.
Eden, serpent in, an Aryan myth,

166.
Edward I., King, legend concerning,

30.
Efreets, the Arabian, 48, 1 68, 175,

179.

Egg, the earth as an, 233.
Egil, the Tell of Iceland, 6 ; legend

of, traced to sun-myth, 32.

Egyptian story of a Wali and a
pot of herbs, 9.

Eilden, sorceress of the, and Thomas
of Erceldoune, 40.

Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 30.

Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., 30;
Hungarian Countess, homicidal
insanity of, no.

Elves in Teutonic mythology, 131.

Embodiment, theory of, 306.

Endymion, his slumber as a winter-
myth, 34 ; and Selene, 219.

England as the Phaiakian land of
German mythology, 38.

English peasants, superstitions of, in
regard to the wind, 43.

Eos, a more recent personification
than Athene, 268 ; the goddess
of the sensuous glories of day-
break, 275.

Epilepsy explained by our ancestors
by a belief in changelings, 117,
119.

Epimenides, his sleep as a winter-
myth, 35.

Epimetheus and Prometheus, 87.

Erckmann, fimile, and Chatrian,
Alexandre, story of Vittikab, 44.

Erinys, the Greek form of the San-
skrit Saranyu, or morning light,
77, 155 ; in the Oidipous sun-
myth, 153—155; the degradation
of, 167; detecting crime, 283 n.

Erlking, legend of the, as a wind-
myth, 41, 44.

Eros and Psyche, story of, 134 n.

Esquimaux, no distinction between
animate and inanimate in the
language of, 24 n. ; a moon-
myth of, 219.

Es-Sirat, bridge of, Mohammedan
rainbow-myth, 65.

Etymology a source of myths, 96.

Etzel, how far historical, 272.

Euhemerism, whereof it consists,
20 ; and American myths, 207.

Euphemisms for dreaded beings,
301 n.

Eurykleia and Odysseus, 34.

335

INDEX

Excalibur, a solar weapon, 32.

Excursions of an E-vo/utionist, chap-
ters iii.-v., possibly fragments of
the projected work, Aryana
faedjo, 1 66 n.

Faber, no mention of Tell in chron-
icles of, a.

«' Faded metaphors," 263 n.
Fafnir, 1 80.
Fairies degraded by Christianity, 133,

'75-

Faithful John, story of, 10 ; con-
nection with Gellert myth, 10.

Farid-Uddin-Attar, Tell legend in
Persian poem of, 7.

Faro Islands, belief of the inhabitants
of, in regard to seals, 136.

Fasting, use of, in producing oracular
inspiration, 321 n.

Feather dresses in folk-lore, 134,

135-

Fena, use and form of the word, 97 ;
wrongly identified with Phoinix,
97-

Fern, renders its bearer invisible, 60 ;
avoided by snakes, 83.

Ferrar, W. H., on the word Latium,
in Comparative Grammar of
Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, 99 n.

Fetches, philosophy of, 308.

Fetichism, as the earliest form of re-
ligion, 148, 319 ; in primeval
philosophy, 291— 321 5 in ani-
mals, 298.

Fick, August, on Bhaga, in Woer-
terbuch der Indogermanischen
Grundsprache, 142 n.

Ficus religiosa, its spear-like leaves,
75 n.

Figuier, Louis, on human souls, in
The To-morro-w of Death, 312.

Fijians, give souls to natural objects,
24 n. ; their theory of a second
death, 311.

Fingal, derivation of, 97.

Finnish conception, of the earth as
an egg, 22 ; of the storm-cloud,
76.

Fire, ancient Hindu method of ob-
taining, 84.

Fire-drill, Hindu, 84-87.

Fire-myths, 84.

Foi scientifiquc, and divination, 52 ;
preventive against self-deception,

Folk-lore of all Aryan countries has a

common origin with Greek gods

and heroes, 48, 323.
Folliculus, story of, 10 n.
Forget-me-not, the luck-flower in

lightning-myths, 56.
Forty Thieves, story of, as a light-
ning-myth, 57.
Forum Boarium, the place where

Hercules pastured his oxen, 158.
Fouque, F. H. K., Baron de la

Motte, his Sr Elidoc, 82.
Four and the primitive worship of

the cardinal points, 217.
Freeman, E. A., on Carlovingian

romance, 269, 271.
Freischiitz and Devil, 172.
Frere, Mary, Old Deccan Days, on

Punchkin, 13.
Freudenberger, Uriel, condemned to

be burnt for doubting the story of

Tell, 4.
Freyr, the cloud-ship of, 67 ; Norse

Frodi identified with, 90.
Frodi, story of his quern a lightning-
myth, 89, 90 5 identified with

Freyr, 90.
Frost-Giants, 176.
Funeral sacrifices illustrating theory

of object-souls, 315.
Fury, its prototype in Sanskrit means

the morning light, 77.
Fuseli, J. H., his Mara, 126.

Gaelic musician, lyre of the, classed
among wind-myths, 44.

Gaia, a more recent personification
than Demeter, 268.

Gallon, Francis, his theory with re-
gard to the genius of the Greeks,
251.

Gambrinusand the Devil, 173-175.

INDEX

Gandharba Sena, story of, 134 n.

Gandharvas, or cloud-demons, 130.

Garcilaso de la Vega, his anecdote of
the Peruvian Inca, 151.

Garrows in Bengal place their dead
in boats, 66 n.

Gellert story, proved to be a myth,
8 ; a form of, occurs in nearly
every Aryan nation, 9 ; versions
of, in various nations, 9-15.

Gellius, Aulus, on Kaikias, 160.

Genesis of Language, essay on,
196 n.

Geryon in the myth of Hercules and
Cacus and in the Greek myth,
157-161.

Gessler, no such name appears on
the charters of Kiissenach, 2.

Gesta Romanorum, story of Folliculus
in, 10 n. j story of Diocletian's
ostrich in, 59 n. j tales of the
devil in, 169 n.

Ghosts, primitive belief in, 297 ;
connected with men's shadows,
303 ; etymology of, 305 ; and
funeral sacrifices, 314, 316.

Giant who had no Heart in his Body,
story of, 12, 179; resemblance
to Punchkin, 13, 215.

Giant with his Soul in a Snake, 307.

Giants or Trolls as uncivilized pre-
historic Europeans, 1 76.

Gibbs, J. W., on "faded meta-
phors," in Philological Studies,
263 n.

Girdles used by werewolves, 122,
123.

Gladstone, W. E., his Juventus
Mundi reviewed, 235-281 ; his
Studies on Homer and the Homeric
Age, 235.

Glistening Heath, 180.

Gloves of Flemish Nixies, 135.

God, derivation of the name, 143 ;
originally meant storm-wind, 268.

Goethe, J. W. von, his Erlking,
41 ; added a
252.

Golden Fleece as clouds, 1 80.

new part to Faust,

Gorgon Medusa, benumbing power
of, 79.

Graiai, realm of the, the sky, 67.

Great Bear, the constellation, origin
of the name, 99.

Greek gods and heroes, names of,
occur in Sanskrit with physical
meanings, 26 ; regarded merely as
persons by the Greeks, 27 ; have
a common origin with folk-lore
heroes of all Aryan nations, 48,

3*3-

Greeks, their idea of the sky, 66 ;
the date of their entrance into
Europe, 266 } their colonization
of Asia, 271.

Greenlanders' idea of the soul, 305.

Grenier, Jean, the case of, 113,
122.

Grey, Sir George, the Australian
natives, in his jfournals, 183 n.

Grimm, J. L. K.., on interpretation
of mythology, viii j on die com-
mon origin of Aryan mythology,
194 ; on the root dev, 144.

Grote, George, on the discrimination
of fancy from reality, 240 ; on
the earliest date of Greek History,
242 ; on the artistic structure of
the Homeric Poems, 252-256 ;
his History of Greece on the
Homeric Poems, 245, 248.

Guillimann, Francois, one of the
first authors to doubt the story of
William Tell, 3.

Gunadhyi, Sanskrit, classed among
wind-myths, 44.

Gunther, a personification, 272.

Guodan, the name, how related to
God, 143.

Gyges, ring of, 60.

Gypsies, their use of the word devilt
143-

Hagen, and Siegfried in sun-myth,
33 ; a personification, 272.

Hamlet as a sun-myth, 263 n.

Hammerlin, no mention of Tell in
chronicles of, 2.

337

INDEX

Hand of Glory, in North Europe
mythology, 61 ; story of, 61 ;
corresponding hand among Mexi-
cans, 62 ; used by Irish thieves
in 1831, 62 ; used to find buried
treasure in the Middle Ages, 63 ;
interpretation of the myth, 76.

Hardrada, Harold and Hemingr, 6.

Hardwick, Charles, on the soul, in
Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-
Lore , 304 n.

Hardy, R. S., his Manual of
Buddhism, 105 n.

Hare-lip, origin of, according to
Hottentot myth, 219.

Harknd, John, his Lancashire Folk-
Lore, on love-charms, 89 n. ; on
witch of Lancashire, 306.

Harold Blue-tooth, and Palnatoki,
4-6.

Haroun Alraschid and the luck-
flower, 57.

Hasheesh, reason of its sacredness,
321 n.

Hassan of El-Basrah, story of, 17 n.,

!35n-
Hatto, Bishop, story of, 45 ; his

tower a " customs-tower," 98.
Hausser, L., in Tell bibliography,

3*5-
Hazel, as a lightning-tree, 74 ;

avoided by snakes, 83 ; nuts of,

as love charms, 88, 89.
Hazel rod, used to find water in an

American village, 50-53 ; as a

thrashing-rod, 91.
Head, Sir Edmund, on the Berserker

madness, in ftga Gluni's Saga,

109 n.
Heartless Giant, story of, 12, 179 ;

resemblance to Punchkin, 13,

"5-

Hekataios, no literary Greek history
before the age of, 259.

Hektor, his part in the Iliad, struc-
turally considered, 255, 256 ; not
conceived of by Homer as an ordi-
nary mortal, 261.

Helena, the Greek form of the San-

skrit Sarama, 26, 164 n. ; origin
of the myth of the faithlessness
of, 164; not conceived of by
Homer as an ordinary mortal,
260, 267 ; known in Aryana-
vae'djo, 263 ; her parallel in the
Rig-Veda, 265 ; connected with
the root sar, 267.

Helios, the same as Surya, 1 64 n. ;
a more recent personification than
Apollo, 268 ; Gladstone's ex-
planation of, 277.

Helleand Phrixos, 180.

Hellenes, in the Homeric poems,
243 ; in the historical period,
243.

Hemingr, the Tell of Norway, 6 ;
story of, traced to sun-myth, 32.

Henderson, William, Folk-Lore of
the Northern Counties of England,
62 n.

Hengst and Horsa, credibility of the
legend of, 242.

Hephaistos, and Aphrodite, 88n. ;
in the Iliad and Odyssey, 256,
257.

Herakleids, legend of, 242.

Herakles, as degraded by Euhemeros,
20 ; and Eurystheus, 32 ; and
Nessos, 33 ; as the sun, 25, 150,
152 ; etymology of, 158 n. ; con-
fused with Hercules, 158; his
epithet Alexikakos, 159; barbaric
parallel to, 213, 232.

Heraldic emblems a relic of the
totems of savagery, 106.

Hercules, etymology of, 1580.; con-
fused with Herakles, 158 ; origi-
nal character of, 158.

Hercules and Cacus, the myth of,
explained as a sun-myth, 157—
164 5 attached to the mediaeval
Devil, 169.

Here, queen of the blue air in ancient
mythology, 26.

Hermai, mutilation of the, 91.

Hermes, the Greek form of the
Sanskrit Sarameias, 25, 26, 47,
164 n., 276; as the wind-god.

338

INDEX

a 5, 47 ; fusion of sun and wind
gods in, 43, 91 ; in Homeric
Hymns, 47 ; rod of, as the light-
ning, 90 ; leader of the Pitris in
Vedic religion, 104 ; the wish-
hound of, 104 ; characteristic of,
retained by the Devil, 168 ; Ameri-
can parallel to, 206, 213.

Herodotos, on the date of Homer,
242 ; no literary Greek history
before the age of, 259.

Hertz, Wilhelm, on the belief in
werewolves, 96.

Hiatus in Homeric poems, 249.

Hildesheim, monk of, his sleep as a
winter-myth, 35.

Hindus, their ideas of rain-clouds,
66 ; myth of churning the ocean
with Mount Mandara, 85 ; their
belief in metempsychosis, 101 ;
their practice of self-immolation
for purposes of revenge, 1 02 n.

Hisely, J. J., in Tell bibliography,

.3Z5;
Historic period, beginning of, 239,

240.

Hitopadesa, story of the Brahman
and the Goat in, 16.

Horsel, the Aphrodite or moon-god-
dess of German mythology, 38,

*57-

Horselberg, legend of the, 38.

Holda, 46.

Holy water traced to rainwater-myth,
86 n.

Homer, knew nothing of the source
of his myths, 72 ; the birthplace
of, 240, 241 ; identity of, 240 ;
his date, 240—244, 258.

Homeric Hymns, Hermes in, 47.

Homeric legends may have some
historical basis, 27 n.

Homeric poems, the state of society
depicted in, 237 ; date of, 240-
244; Greece and the Greek
tribes, according to, 242, 243 ;
possibly the oldest existing speci-
mens of Aryan literature, 244 ;
Wolfs theory of the composition

of, 245 ; Wolfs objection that
they are too long to have been
preserved by memory, 246 ; com-
posed long before they were com-
mitted to writing, 248 ; the evi-
dence of language on the question
of their composition, 248 ; inter-
nal evidence of their unity of
composition, 249—256 ; the lit-
erary characteristics of, 250—252 j
their artistic structure examined,
252—256 ; Grote's theory of the
composition of the Iliad, 252—
256 ; arguments for the divided
authorship of, 256 ; Fiske's view
of the authorship of, 257; Glad-
stone's view of the authorship of,
258 ; their value as testimony to
the truth of statements therein
contained, 260, 273 ; their con-
tents compared with those of the
Veda, the Edda, and the Nibe-
lungenlied, 263—266.

Homerids, the, 247.

Homicidal insanity, the cases of the
Marechal de Retz and the Count-
ess Elizabeth, 1105 accompanied
by cannibalism, in ; accom-
panied by hallucination, 112.

Horsa and Hengst, credibility of the
legend of, 242.

Hottentot myth of the moon and
the hare, 218.

Houris, related to the Valkyries
and the Apsaras, 139.

Humboldt, F. H. A., Baron von,
worship of the cardinal points in
his Kosmos, 21 7 n.

Hungerbuhler, H., in Tell biblio-
graphy, 325.

Hydrophobia, myth of the prevention
of, 293.

Hyllos and Oxylos, not historical
personages, 242.

Hyperboreans, the garden of, 155,

Ida, meaning of, 154.
Ideler,J. L., in Tell bibliography,
3*5-

339

INDEX

Idiocy, explained in the Middle Ages
as diabolical metamorphosis, 116.

Iliad, the sixth and the twenty-fourth
books compared, 251 ; Grote's
theory of the structure of, 252-
256 ; the characters of, not con-
ceived of by Homer as ordinary
mortals, 260, 261. See Homeric
poems.

Iliad myth, known in Aryana-
vaedjo, 263, 269 • appears in the
Veda and the Nibelungenlied,
263 ; how far to be considered
an account of the victory of light
over darkness, 263 n. ; formed
of mythical conceptions and genu-
ine tradition, 269 ; compared with
Carlovingian romance, 269-272.

Use, Princess, and the luck-flower,

Ilsenstein shepherd, story of, a light-
ning-myth, 56.

Inanimate objects, supposed by the
savages to have souls, 24 n., 313,
323.

Indian summer a sun-myth, 34.

Indians, American, their sun-god
and winter - myth, 34 ; regard
lightning as fiery serpents, 69,

1 70 ; their explanation of the
sun's course, 152 ; had no word

I to express the idea of God, 148 n. 5
mythology of, 206-217; their

' practice of driving away ghosts of
slain, 309.

Indo-European nations, descended
from a common Aryan stock,
192 ; possess common myths and
legends, 192.

Indra, and the cloud mountains,
72 n. ; mead drunk by, 86 ; de-
gradation of, 144 n. ; contradic-
tion hi the Aryan conception of;
149 ; a personification of light
and warmth. 149 ; in the Rig-
Veda, 160, 161, 163,265.

Indra conquering Vritra, myth of,
one of the theorems of primitive
Aryan science, 194; contained

germs of a theology, 1945 the
parent of countless myths, 1 94.

Indra Savitar, the golden hand of,
76.

Insanity and other self, 301, 318.

lokaste in the Oidipous sun-myth,

lole as the morning and evening
light hi ancient mythology, 25,
265.

loskeha, legend of, 211.

Iris, Gladstone on, 276.

Irish, the, origin of the theory of
their being Phoenicians, 97.

Iroquois have partial distinction be-
tween animate and inanimate in
their language, 24 n.

Itshe-likantunjambili, legend of, 227.

Itu in Polynesian sun-myth, 230.

Ixion, his wheel as the sun, 26, 67 ;
his treasure-house as a lightning-
cavern, 8 1.

Jack and Jill, as a moon-myth, 37,

288 ; in Sanskrit myths, 38.
Jack and the Bean-Stalk, found all

over the world, 31, 204; in

Malay myth, 221.
Jack the Giant-Killer, 177, 182.
Jacolliot, Louis, his Bible in India

a disgraceful piece of charlatanry,

278.
Jehovah, as dispensing good and evil,

1 66; unwillingness of the Jews

to pronounce, 301 n.
Jews, their idea of the sky, 65 ; their

conception of Satan, 166.
Jinn, 175.
Job, Book of, conception of Satan

in, 1 66.
Jotuns, 175.

Jonah and the whale, 105 n.
Joseph and Zuleikha, myth of, and

that of Bellerophon and Anteia,

resemblance between, 277.
Joseph of Arimathza and the Holy

Grail, place of the legend of,

among myths, 36.
Jupiter, etymology of, 25, 145,

340

INDEX

146 j the original hero of the
Cacus-myth, 159.

Justi on clouds as mountains in
Orient und Occident, 73 n.

Justinian, Emperor, supposed connec-
tion with Daras, 97.

Ju-ventui Mundi, 235-281.

Kadmos, American parallel to,
206.

Kaikias, a Greek demon, 159.

Kalidasa, Kali Das, author of drama
on Urvasi and Pururavas, 130;
and the dawn-myths, 214.

Kallisto, origin of myth of, 100.

Kalypso, a goddess of night, 272.

Kalypso and Odysseus, story of,
classed among moon-myths, 40 ;
corresponds to Venus-Ursula in
the Tannhauser-myth, 151 n.

Kamtchatkan lightning-myth, 229.

Karl the Great of history, 270.

Kasimbaha, legend of, 220.

Kelly, W. K., on connection of
suicides and storms, 77 ; his Indo-
European Folk-Lore, on placing
the dead in boats, 66 n. ; on
snakes' avoidance of certain trees
and plants, 84 n. j on churning
the ocean, 86.

Kennedy, Patrick, his Fictions of
the Irish Celts, on the story of
Richard, 119 n. ; on seal- women,
136 n. ; on Red James, 138 n. ;
on story of Sculloge of Muskerry,
184.

Kerberos, Greek form of the San-
skrit (jarvara, 27 ; a kinsman of
Cacus and Orthros, 1 60 ; charac-
teristics of, retained by the Devil,
168.

King Arthur's boat, 66.

Kirke as a dawn-maiden, 151 n.

Klakkr, Old Norse, means both cloud
and rock, 73 n.

Kleisthenes, edicts of, 247.

Kolbeck, dancers of, their place
among myths, 36.

Koroibos, the Olympiad of, the ear-

liest ascertainable date in Greek

history, 240.

Krates on the date of Homer, 241.
Krilof, I. A. , his story of the Gnat

and the Shepherd, 10 n.
Kuhn, Adalbert, prefatory note on,

vii ; his Die Herabkunft det

Fetters und des Gottertranks, 63 ;

on the Mara, 1 3 1 n. ; his Beitrage

on the Gypsy use of the word

devil, 143 n.

La Fontaine, Jean de, fables of, pat-
terned after those of y£sop and
Phzdrus, 8.

Labe, Queen, 151 n.

Lachmann, Karl, on the composi-
tion of the Iliad, 251.

Lad who went to the North Wind,
story of the, 91.

Lady of Shalott's boat, 66.

Laios in the Oidipous sun-myth,
152-154.

Lancashire witch transfers her famil-
iar spirit, 305.

Lane, E. W., his Arabian Nights,
on the Jinni's soul, 14 n. ; on
Hassan of El-Basrah, 17 n. j on
feather dresses, 1 3 5 n.

Language, a permanent, must have
a basis of civilization, 202, 203.

Languages, all, cannot be traced to a
common ancestor, 201.

Lapps as Giants or Trolls, I 76.

Latium, real and Vergilian etymology
of, 98.

Lazarus, Dr., account of, in De
r Intelligence, 53.

Legends, borrowing and lending of,
8, 18 ; community of origin of,
10, 19 ; correspondence in con-
ception of, 15, 19; tales of gran-
nies, peasants, and servants the
source of, 1 8 ; the beauty and
faithful repetition of, 19 ; the
marvellous in, 21 ; distinction be-
tween myths, misrepresentations
and, 29. See also Myths.

Leichnam, etymology of, 138.

341

INDEX

Leopard and Ram, story of, 1 77 n.

Leopold, Duke, at the battle of
Morgarten, 3.

Lewis, Sir G. C., the retentive
memory of, 246.

Liebenau, in Tell bibliography, 325.

Light and Darkness, 141—190.

Lightning, symbolized by a divining-
rod, 55, 74, 77, 78, 84, 89;
symbolized by certain plants or
trees, 56-58, 74; as schamir,
58, 69, 76 ; as carried by birds,
59 ; benumbing power of, 79 ;
as a benefactor, 8 1— 89 ; as the
rod of Hermes, 90.

Lightning-myths, 55-93 ; resem-
blance to daybreak-myths, 78.

Lightning-plants, 56-59. See Plants
symbolic of lightning.

Lightning-trees, 74.

Literature, the beginnings of, mark
the growth of the world, 238,
239 ; the date of the beginnings
of, 239, 240.

Littre, M. P. E., oafoi scientifique
and divination, 52.

Livy on the myth of Hercules and
Cacus, 157.

Llewellyn and his dog, story of,
proved to be a myth, 8 ; story of,
occurs among nearly every Aryan
people, 9. See Gellert story.

Logos the source of Athene, ac-
cording to Gladstone, 274.

Lotos-eaters, country of, the sky, 67.

Loup-garou, etymology and meaning
of, 95. See Werewolf.

Luck-flower, story of, 56 ; found in
Persia, 57 ; makes its finder in-
visible, 60 n.

Lucretius, the laissex-faire divinities
of, 104.

Lunar spots, myths concerning the,
36. See Moon-myths.

Luxman and Rama, story of, and its
connection with Gellert myth, 1 1 .

Lycanthropy, regarded as a species
of witchcraft, 108 ; modern cases
of, III, 115. See Werewolves.

Lydus, Johannes, on Sancus, 159.
Lykaios, epithet of Zeus, meaning

of, 96.
Lykaon, king of Arkadia, story of,

94 ; origin of story of, 96, 100 ;

his legend a variation of that of

Tantalos, loo.
Lykegenes, epithet of Phoibos,

meaning of, 96.
Lykians, etymologically " the chil-

dren of light," 100, 269.
Lykourgos, his career not histori-

cally clear, 259.

Mackay, R. W., on personification

of names, in Religious Develop-

ment of the Greeks and Hebrews,

301 n.
M'Lennan, The Worship of Animals

and Plants, on object-souls, 24 n.;

on metempsychosis and ancestor-

worship, 101, 1 02 n.
Mausethurm, story of, 45 ; origin

of the word, 98 .
Magniisson, Eirikr, on the Berser-

ker madness, in
109 n.

Grettis Saga,

Mahabharata, the, a collection of

ballads, 245, 249.
Mahaffy, J. P., his Prolegomena to

Ancient History, on etymologies,

47 n. ; on Odysseus and Polyphe-

mos, 72 ; on myth-makers,

183 n.
Maitland, Edward, blasphemous re-

mark of, 141.
Malalas, Joannes, on the explana-

tion of the word Daras or Doras,

97-
Malays, their belief that men turn

into crocodiles, 222 n. ; instance

of belief in metempsychosis among,

314 n.
Malleus Maleficarum, story of Tell

in, 6.
Man in the Moon, legends of the,

36, 37-

Manabozho, legend of, 208.
Mandara, Mount, as the churning*

342

INDEX

stick of gods and devils in Hindu
myth, 85.

Manes-worship developed into the
worship of deities, 319, 320.
See Ancestor-worship.

Maoris, their divination with Venus
and the moon, 294 ; wraith ap-
pearing to, 308.

Mara, a female demon, or night-
mare, 126; character of the, as
nightmare, illustrated by Nether-
landish story, 127 ; as a beautiful
lady, 127, 128; as related to
the Nixies, or Swan-maidens,
128, 129 ; original characteristics
of, degraded by Christianity, 129,
130; in Teutonic mythology,
1 3 1 ; South German prescription
for getting rid of, 131.

Marcus Aurelius, personification of
the sky in, 24 n.

Martin, B. L. H., on the Marechal
de Retz, 1 1 1 .

Marvellous, the, in legends, 21 ; an
important factor in the minds of
primitive men, 21—23.

Master Thief, legend of the, 1 5 ;
as a wind-myth, 48.

Maui in Polynesian sun-myth, 230.

Mbulu, abode of departed spirits ac-
cording to Fijians, 24 n.

Medeia as a dawn-maiden, 151 n.

Medusa, her relationship, 155.

Meleagros as the sun, 25, 33, 152.

Melusina, story of, 131—133.

Memnon, son of the Dawn, 269.

Memory, cases of extraordinary, 246,
247.

Menelaos, how far historical, 272.

Merchant of Louvain and Devil,
171.

Merlin, spellbound, as a winter-myth,

35- .
Mermaid as foretokening shipwreck,

140.
Mermaid's cap in witchcraft, 136,

137.
Metempsychosis, the doctrine of,

lor ; connected with ancestor-
worship, 1 01, 102 ; connected
with belief in werewolves, 105-
108, 311 ; in Malay, 314 n.

Meyer, Karl, in Tell bibliography,
326.

Mice as souls, 45, 46, 306.

Michabo, sun-god of American In-
dians, 34, 100 ; etymology of the
name, 100, 209 ; legends of,
208-212 ; a sun-god, 209, 212.

Michelet, Jules, on the Marechal
de Retz, no.

Middleton, Conyers, on children be-
ing brought to St. Theodoras,
320 n.

Miledh, the epithet, misunderstood,

97:

Milesian, sobriquet of the Irish, 97.
Milesius, the mythical hero, origin

of, 97.

Milky Way, myth of, 205.
Mill, J. S., on the Iliad, in Dinerta'

tions and Discussions, 256.
Mirror, myth that the breaking of,

portends death, 293.
Mishkat-ul-Ma'sabih, explanation of

the nature of the stars

in, 29.

found in all parts of the world,

343

Misrepresentations, distinction be-
tween myths, legends, and, 30.

Mistletoe, as a lightning-tree, 74 ;
therapeutic properties of, 83 j and
marriage, 88, 89.

Mitra in the Rig-Veda, 149.

Moira as the curse in the story of
the Wandering Jew, 155 n.

Mole in American sun-myth, 23 1 .

Mommsen, Theodor, on Herakles
and Hercules, in Romische Ge-
schichte, 159 n.

Monotheism not a primitive reli-
gion, 147, 148.

Moon, and hare in Hottentot moon-
myth, 1 28 ; Jack and Jill in the,
37-

Moon-myths, in ancient mythology,
36—41 ; barbaric, 218—220.

Morris, William, on the Berserkers,

Grettis Saga, 109 n.

INDEX

Mouse tower, story of, 45.

Miiller, Max, prefatory note on,
vii ; on Greek and Sanskrit ety-
mologies, 27 ; on the Great Bear,
99 ; on Sarama, Helena and
Paris, 164 n. ; on the study of
words and myths, 196—200; his
Essay on Comparative Mythology,

282 ; on the genesis of myths,

283 j on the personification of
names, 301 n. ; on the etymology
of ghoit, 305 ; his Rig-Veda
Sanhita, on clouds as mountains,
73 n. ; on Bhaga, 142 n. ; on
contradictions in the theogonic
speculations of the Aryans, 149 ;
his Chips from a German Work-
shop, on the Mara, 1 3 1 n. ; on
the degradation of Indra, 144 n. ;
on the predominance of solar
myths, 183 n. ; on words in de-
rivative languages, 196, 197 ; his
Science of Language on Paris,
263 n., 268.

Muir, Sir William, on the Hindu
storm-wind, in Sanskrit Texts,
1 06 ; on Bhaga, 142 n.

Muri-ranga-whenua in Polynesian
sun-myth, 230.

Muskoghee, no distinction between
animate and inanimate in language
of, 24 n.

Mykenai, the seat of suzerainty in
the Iliad, 271.

Mythology, of the ancients, was their
attempt to explain natural phe-
nomena, 21—28, 194; methods
of philology applied to, 195—200,
204, 322 ; physical geography
compared to, 200 ; psychology
and, 284, 322 ; summary of the
genesis and development of, 322.

Myths, definition of, 20 ; the mar-
vellous as the root of, 21 ; em-
body man's first ideas on physi-
cal phenomena, 21—28, 194 ;
allegorical interpretation of, inade-
quate, 28, 288 ; distinction be-
tween legends, misrepresentations,

and, 29 ; leading incidents remain
constant in corresponding, 30 ;
fading of primitive meanings of,
70 ; no philosophical symmetry
in, 71 j incongruities in, 71, 72 j
etymological, 96 ; descended from
a common original, 193 ; resem-
blance between, 195, 197, 205,
215 ; description of natural phe-
nomena in, 194, 205, 286 $
Aryan and barbaric compared,
195, 201, 206, 213, 216, 217,
225, 232 ; kinship in, 200, 203,
205 ; common conceptions in,
205 ; identity in details, 21 6 ;
genesis of, 282, 289, 291, 322 ;
as developed into superstitions,
289.

Myths of the Barbaric World, 191-
234 ; personification of natural
phenomena in, 195, 215 ; can
have no common origin, 203 ;
kinship in, 204, 217; absence
of a certain class of dawn-myths
in, 213-215.

Myth-makers, explanation of natural
phenomena the reason for the ex-
istence of, 283 ; believed in the
literal truth of their personifica-
tions, 283 n. ; mode of thought
of, analyzed, 284—322.

Names of lords and chiefs, unwilling-
ness of savages to tell, 298 n.

Nation, The, on how far dogs are
capable of fetichistic notions,
298 n.

Nature, on how far dogs are capable
of fetichistic notions, 298 n.

Nausikaa, origin of the myth of,
139.

Necklace of Swan-maidens, 135.

Nephele, the children of, correspond
to the Panis of the Rig-Veda solar
myth, 264.

Nessos, the cloud fiend, in ancient
mythology, 33.

Nestor, not conceived of by Homer
as an ordinary mortal, 261.

344

INDEX

New World, mythology of, 206.
Nibelungen bards and dawn-myths,

214.
Nibelungenlied, the myth which

serves as the basic of, 1 80 ; the

Wrath of Achillas in, 263 ;

compared with the Iliad, 272.
Nibelungs correspond to the Panis of

the Rig-Veda solar myth, 264.
Niebuhr, B. C., the retentive mem-
ory of, 246 ; his philological

theory, 279.
Night - and - morning - myths, their

connection with storm-myths,

161-164.

Nightmare, etymology of, 126 n.
Nixies of Flemish legend, 135. See

Mara.
Not a Pin to choose between them,

173 n.
Nou-veau Journal Asiatiqut on the

roc in mythology, 68.
Numa and Egeria, legend of, classed

among moon-myths, 40.
Numen, transition from conception

of human ghost to that of, 321.
Numerals, loss and change of, in

barbaric languages, 202.
Nymph, meaning of the word,

132 n.

Oberon, and his horn classed among
wind-myths, 44 ; goblet of, 89.

Object souls, 313—318, 322. See
Souls.

Odin, as a psychopomp, 44, 46, 47,
309 ; his golden ship as a cloud,
66 ; as lord of the gallows, 77 ;
his lightning spear, 9 1 ; leader of
the Pitris in Vedic religion, 1 04 ;
as the ogre of the story of Jack
and the Bean-Stalk, 108 ; the
name, how related to God, 143 ;
characteristic of, retained by the
Devil, 1 68.

795

Odysseus, as the sun, 32,

putting out the eye of Polyphe-

33,
Poh

mos, 72 n. ; and Kalypso, 40,

41, 151 n., 272.

Odyssey, Grote's theory of the struc-
ture of, 252. See Homeric
poems.

Oidipous, 29, 8 1 ; the story of, as a
sun-myth, 152-156, 268.

Oinone as the morning and evening
light in ancient mythology, 25,

.'54-
Ointment, talismanic, has no special

mythical significance, 74.
Olaf, Saint, the story of, 178, 179.
Olaf Tryggvesson, his sleep as a

winter-myth, 35.
Old Aryan, Indo-European languages

descended from the, 191.
Old Nick, 169.

Olger Danske, his sleep as a winter-
myth, 35.
Oracle possession, 321 ; fasting and,

321 n.
Ormuzd, how represented in the

Zendavesta, 164, 165.
Orpheus, legend of, as a wind-myth,

43 ; and the Symplegades, 73 ;

characteristic of, retained by the

Devil, 168.
Orthros, a kinsman of Cacus and

Kerberos, 1 60 ; the Vritra of the

Rig- Veda, 160.
Ossa, a cloud mountain, 73.
Other self, primitive doctrine of, 296 ;

in catalepsy, 300 ; in portraits

and reflections, 30.1 ; in echoes,

302; in shadows, 303. See also

Soul.
Ovid, story of Lykaon in, 94 ; on

the myth of Hercules and Cacus,

'57-
Oxylos and Hyllos, not historical

personages, 242.

Palnatoki, the Danish William Tell,
4-6 ; story of, traced to sun-myth,
32.

Pan, characteristics of, retained by
the Devil, 168.

Panch Phul Ranee, Hindu story of,

Panchatantra, Gellert story in, 9.

345

INDEX

Panis, Sanskrit prototype of Greek
Paris, 27 ; and Ahi, 78 ; in the
Rig- Veda, 1 60, 163, 164, 264,
267 ; whether answering to Paris,
1 64 n. 5 in the Zendavesta, 1 64 ;
compared with Trolls and Zulu
cannibals, 225.

Pansa the Splay-footed, the Tell of
Norway, 6.

Panther in the fire-myth of Sioux
Indians, 84.

Pardon begged of a slain animal or
hewn tree, 311-313.

Paris, Greek form of Sanskrit Panis,
27, 164 n. ; his part in the Iliad,
2.61, 267 ; known in Aryana-
vae'djo, 263 ; invested with at-
tributes of solar heroes, 263 n.,
268.

Parkman, Francis, on the idea of
God among the North Ameri-
can Indians, in Jesuits in North
America, 148 n.

Parvata means both cloud and moun-
tain, 73 n.

Patroklos, his part in the Iliad,
structurally considered, 255, 256.

Paul Pry as a wind-myth, 48.

Pausanlas, his testimony with regard
to a remote antiquity, of what
value, 259.

Peisistratos, Homeric poems said to
have been arranged under the
orders of, 245.

Pelasgian theory, Niebuhr's, 279.

Pelasgians in the Homeric poems,
243.

Pelion, a cloud mountain, 73.

Pentateuch, the composition of, 249.

Permanence in language and culture,
conditions essential to, 203.

Perseus, a solar hero, 32, 1 8 1,
268.

Personification, of natural phenom-
ena, 24, 194, 322, 323 ; of in-
animate objects, 24, 313—318,
322.

Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widely
diffused family of legends, 303.

Phsdrus, fables of, borrowed by

La Fontaine, 8.
Phaethon, son of the sun in ancient

mythology, 25.
Philip II.. the charge of the murder

of Elizabeth a

msrepresentaon,

Philology, in connection with my-
thology, 195—200, 204 ; what it
tells us in regard to civilization,
202 5 an exacting science, 280.

Philosopher's stone, 89.

Phoibos, the sun in ancient mythol-
ogy, 25 ; Chrysaor, the bolt of,
31 ; Lykegenes, meaning of the
epithet, 96.

Phoinix, wrongly identified with
Fena, 97.

Phoroneus as the first man, 88.

Phrixos and Helle, 1 80.

Pictures, animation of, by savages
and young children, 301.

Piper of Hamelin, story of, 42 ; as a
wind-myth, 42, 43 ; appearance
of the story in Abyssinia, 43 j as
a psychopomp, is followed by rats,

45-
Pitris, the, in the Vedic religion,

103, 104; became elementary

deities, 320.
Planchette, its relation to lafoi scien-

«fiV"i 53- .

Plants, symbolic of lightning, 56—
59 ; reasons for the choice of,
uncertain, 74 ; therapeutic proper-
ties of, 82 ; as love-charms, 88 j
supposed by savages to have souls,

3J3-
Plato, on Demainetos in the Republic,

95 n.
Pliny, his account of springwort,

59 ; on a snake and ash rod, 83 j

on the festival of Zeus Lykaios,

94-
Plutarch, his testimony with regard

to a remote antiquity, of what

value, 259.
Polomyia, the cannibalistic beggar of,

346

INDEX

Polyidos and Glaukos, Greek story
of, 82.

Polynesian sun-myths, 229.

Polyphemos, his eye, as the sun,
put out by Odysseus, 67, 72 n. ;
the story of, reappears in connec-
tion with the Devil, 1 70.

Pomeranian myths, schamir in, 60.

Porta Trigemina, its connection with
the myth of Hercules and Cacus,
158.

Poseidon, uncertainty in regard to,
276.

Possession, and primitive doctrine of
other self, 300 ; demoniacal,
European theory of, 321 ; kinship
between that of disease and that of
oracle, 321.

Pott, A. F., on the Gypsy use of
the word devil, in Die Zigeuner,

143 "•

Pramantha, or Hindu fire-drill, 87.
Preller, Ludwig, on Sancus and

Herakles in Romische Mythologie,

1 60 n.
Primeval Ghost-World, The, 283-

I»S-

Primeval philosophy and rise of
myths, 21—28, 194, 289, 291.
See also Myths.

Princess Parizade, story of, men-
tioned, 15.

Prior, R. C. A. , Popular Names of
British Plants, 75 n.

Procopius, De Bella Gothico, 38 n.

Prometheus, etymologically con-
nected with the Hindu fire-drill,
87 ; myths of, 87.

Pronunciation as throwing light on
the composition of the Homeric
poems, 248.

Propertius on the myth of Hercules
and Cacus, 157.

Psalms, the composition of, 249.

Psychopomp, the wind as a, 43 ;
symbolized as a dog, 47 ; Odin
as, 44, 46, 47, 309 ; the Piper
of Hamelin as, 45.

Puck, his relationship, 141.

Puncher, the Tell of the Uppef

Rhine, 6.
Punchkin, story of, 13, 179; his

resemblance to the Heartless

Giant, 215.

Pururavas and Urvasi, story of, 130.
Putraka, story of, 17.
Pythian festivals, passages from the

Iliad sung at, 247.

Quetzalcoatl, legend of, 207, 213.
Quichuas, sun-god of the, 212.

Rain-myths, 86.

Rainbow-myths, 205.

Rakshasa, storm-wind of Hindu
folk-lore, 105 ; Cacus as, 1 60.

Ralston, W. R. S., his Krilof and
his Fables, 10 n. ; his Songs of
the Russian People, on the raven-
stone, 60 n. ; on werewolves,
121 n. ; on feather dresses in folk-
lore, 135 n. ; on souls in pigeons
and swallows, 307 n.

Rats as disembodied spirits or souls,
45, 46, 306.

Raven-stone as rendering its owner
invisible, 60.

Reade, Charles, the chark in Never
too Late to Mend, 85.

Red James, story of, 136, 137.

Red Riding-Hood, true version of,
105 n.

Reflections and other self, 302.

Relics as evidences of the truth of
miracles, 2.

Renan, J. E., his suggestion rela-
tive to possible discoveries on the
origin of language, 236 5 his His-
toire des Langues Semitiques, on
science and myth-making, 28 n. ;
on the word Babel, 98 n.

Retz, Marechal de, homicidal insan-
ity of, no.

Reuss, E. W. E. , in Tell bibliography,
326.

Reville, Albert, on Satan, 1 6 6.

Reynard, story of, as a wind-myth,
48.

347

INDEX

Rhampsinitos, story of, as a wind-
myth, 48.

Rhapsodes, Solon's ordinance respect-
ing, MS-

Rickard the Rake, story of, 117,
118.

Rig-Veda. See Veda.

Rilliet, A., in Tell bibliography,

.3*5-

Rip Van Winkle, his sleep as a win-
ter-myth, 35.

Robin, as representing the storm-
cloud, 69 ; its connection with
the god Thor, 69 ; wickedness
of killing the, 69, 70, 289.

Roc, the, as the storm-cloud, 68 ;
egg of, as the sun, 68 ; Euhemer-
ism and, 68 ; in Chinese my-
thology, 68 n. ; in Arabic and
European tradition, 69.

Roland's blade Durandal a solar
weapon, 32.

Romulus, as a solar hero, 268 ; as
guardian of children, 320 n.

Roulet, Jacques, the case of, 114,

122.

Rousseau, J. J., his method of in-
quiring into the safety of his soul,
295.

Rumford, Count, his process of ob-
taining fire by friction, 84.

Russ, Melchoir, the younger, first
chronicler of William Tell, 2.

St. George and the Dragon, tale of,
found in all Aryan nations, 30 ;
a sun-myth, 182.

St. Gertrude, symbolized as a mouse,
also the receiver of children's souls,
46.

St. John's sleep at Ephesus, legend
of, as a winter-myth, 35.

St. Theodorus, church of, and Rom-
ulus, 320 n.

St. Veronica, handkerchief of, as a
proof of miracles, 2.

Saint - worship, Christian, as de-
veloped from manes - worship,
320 n.

Saktideva and the fish, 105 n.

Samoan moon-myth, 218.

Samoyeds, Tell legend among the,
7, 8.

Sancus, the Sabine name of Jupiter,
159, 1 60 n.

Sangreal and wish talismans, 89.

Sarama, the Sanskrit form of the
Greek Helena, 26, 164 n. ; in
the Rig- Veda solar myths, 161,
163, 265, 267; meaning of,
267.

Sarameias, Sanskrit form of Greek
Hermes, 26, 47, 164 n. ; some-
times pictured as a dog, 47.

Saranyu, meaning of, 77 j detecting
crime, 283 n.

Sarpedon, not conceived of by Homer
as an ordinary mortal, 260, 262 ;
a solar hero, 269.

Sassafras as a rock-breaking plant,
58.

Satan, how related to the Persian
Ahriman, 165-167 ; in the Book
of Job and in the later books of
the Bible, 1 6 6, 167. See Devil.

Saxo Grammaticus, Danish account
of Tell by, 4-6.

Scaletta, a passage in the Alps, tradi-
tion of its name, 98.

Scandinavians, primitive philosophy
of, 22 ; their tales of elf-maidens
a form of wind-myth, 43 ; their
practice of burying their dead in
boats, 66.

Scarlet fever, Persian personification
of, 323.

Schamir, as a worm or a stone, 58 ;
as carried by birds, 59 ; as the
hand of glory, 60, 76 5 as render-
ing its possessor invisible, 60 ;
myths of, explain the rending of
the thunder-cloud, 63, 162.

Scherer in Tell bibliography, 326.

Sclavonic rain-myth, 86.

Scott, Sir Walter, drew material for
IvanAoe from William of Cloudes-
lee, 6.

Scribe, A. E., his remark about the

348

INDEX

possible number of dramatic situa-
tions, 156, 1 80.

Sculloge of Musketry, the legend of,
184-190.

Sea, saltness of, explained by a myth,
90.

Sea of Streams of Story, mentioned,

»7«

Seal-women, 136.

Sebastian of Portugal, 35.

Selene, and Endymion, 2.19 ; a more
recent personification than Artemis
and Persephone, 268.

Seminoles, their idea of breath as the
soul, 305.

Serpent in Eden, the story of, is
Aryan, 1 66 ; not alluded to in
Old Testament, 166; identified
with Satan in modern theology
only, 1 6 6.

Serpents, lightning as, 69.

Sesame, its talismanic power, 571.

Sesha used as a rope around Mount
Mandara, 85.

Seven, number, as connected with
the adoration of the sun, moon
and five planets, 217.

Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, as a win-
ter-myth, 35.

Seyf-el-Mulook and Bedeea-el-Jemal,
story of, 14 n.

Shadow, as soul or other self, 303,
318.

Shakespeare, William, his myth of
the Man in the Moon, 36 ;
miraculous fern-seed in his King
Henry IV., 60 n. ; his Hamlet
originally the story of the quar-
rel between summer and winter,
263 n.

Shotover, corruption of Chateau
Vert, 98.

Siberian swan-maiden-myth, 221.

Siegfried, as a sun-myth, 33 ; his
slumber as a winter-myth, 34 ;
a personification of physical phe-
nomena, 272.

Sieve of the daughters of Danaos,
66.

Signature, old medical doctrine of,

_ 75 n-

Sigurd, sword of, a solar weapon,
32 j slain by winter as a thorn,
34 ; the tale of, and that of Her-
cules and Cacus, resemblance be-
tween, 1 80, 181.

Simoon, Moslem personification of,
3*3-

Simrock, Karl, on the Hamlet-
myth, in Die Quellcn des Shake-
speare, 263 n.

Sindbad, tale of, 68.

Sioux Indians, their fire-myth corre-
sponds with Aryan lightning-myth,
84.

Sirens, Greek, legend of, as a wind-
myth, 43.

Sisyphos, stone of, as the sun, 67.

Skin-changers, a name for were-
wolves, 121.

Skithblathnir, the cloud -ship of
Freyr, 67 n.

Sky, as revealed by x science, 63 j
children's idea of, 64, 65 ; an-
cient Jewish idea of, 65 ; Greek
idea of, 66 ; as a sea, 66, 131 ;
starry, as a valley of diamonds,
68.

Skye-terrier and ball, 297.

Sleeping Beauty as a winter-myth in
ancient mythology, 34.

Smith, Sir William, Dictionary of
the Bible, 98 n.

Snakes, their avoidance of the ash,
83.

Snow, German myth of, 65 n.

Solar myth in early times a type of
all myths, 272. See Sun-myths.

Solomon and the schamir, 58.

Solon, inference drawn from his
ordinance respecting rhapsodes,
245 ; edicts of, 247.

Soma as life-imparting deity, 88 n.

Soma-juice, reason of its sacredness,
321 n.

Somadeva Bhatta, his Sea of Streams
of Story on tale of Putraka, 175
on Saktideva and the fish, 105 n.

349

INDEX

Somnambulism and other self, 301.

Song of Sixpence, interpretation of,
287.

Sophocles, E. A., the retentive
memory of, 246.

Souls, symbolized by rats, 45, 46,
306 ; as quitting the body during
lifetime, 303, 304 ; as shadows,
3°3. 3I35 as breath, 304; as
temporarily embodied in birds or
beasts, 306—308 ; as resembling
bodies, 308-310; as killed over
again, 310 ; of beasts, 311 ; of
plants, 312 ; of inanimate ob-
jects, 24 n., 313, 318, 322.

Souris, derivation of the two French
words, 197.

South African werewolf-myth, 222.

Spencer, Herbert, on metempsychosis
and ancestor - worship, in The
Origin of Animal Worship, 101,
102 n., 106, 296n. ; his Recent
Discussions in Science, 102 n. ;
on the animation ' of pictures,
301.

Spenser, Edmund, story of Sir Guyon
in his Faery Sjueen, 81 n.

Spentomainyas in the Zendavesta,
165.

Sphinx, as the thunder-cloud, 81 ;
in the Oidipous sun-myth, 153—

!55-

Spirits, doctrine of, 304-318 ; peo-
pling of natural phenomena with,

318. See also Souls.
Spiritualism and belief in wraiths,

308.

Spoon, dancing, 314 n.
Springwort, its power to cleave rock

in lightning-myths, 59, 74.
Stars, nature of, as explained by

science and ancient mythology,

29 ; in the Vedic religion, 103 ;

German and English superstitions

with regard to, 104.
Stauffacher, his fame less wide than

William Tell's, i.
Storm-cloud as a bird, 59, 69.
Storm-myths, their connection with

night and-morning-myths, 1 6 1—
164.

Sun, suggested the earliest conception
of a Divine Power, 147 ; Aryan
personifications and conceptions
of, 25. 149-156.

Sun-myths, Aryan folk-lore tales as,
1—31 ; in ancient mythology, I,
31—33, 67; incongruity in, 725
their great variety, 150—156,
180—182; why they are so nu-
merous, 1 84 ; appear in all coun-
tries, 205 ; Barbaric, 208-215,
229, 231 ; the Iliad-myth as,
263-266.

Sunset clouds as representing hell to
childish and barbaric minds, 64.

Superstitions, interpretation of, diffi-
cult, vii ; of our primitive ances-
tors, 22, 23.

Surya, the same as Helios, 164 n.

Suttee, not sustained by Vedic au-
thority, 315; found among Euro-
pean Aryans, 316; remarkable
case of, in England, 316.

Swan, Charles, translator. See Gesta
Romanorum.

Swan-maidens, and their dress, 1 34,
135 ; compared with werewolves,
139 ; originally, the clouds, 189 ;
barbaric myths of, 220—222.

Swearing, objection to, traced to its
source, 301 n.

Swiss, cicerone class of, I.

Symplegades, as cloud mountains,
73 ; as the gates of night, 73 n.

Table-tipping and foi scientijique^

53:

Tahitian language, loss ,and change
of numerals in, 202.

Taine, H. A., his De P Intelligence
on Dr. Lazarus, 53 n. ; on were-
wolves, 121 n.

Tannhauser, story of, 38 ; in the
German moon-myths, 38, 41 j
recurs in the folk-lore of all Aryaa
nations, 40.

Tantalos, the legend of, zoo.

350

INDEX

Tartars, Minussinian, swan-maiden-
myths of, 22.2.

Tawiskara, legend of, 211.

Taylor, Isaac, Words and Places, on
derivation of Beth-Gellert, 9 n. ;
on the Antwerp legend, 98 n.

Tell, William, story of, a myth, 1-8,
20 j details of no two accounts
agree, 3 ; first authors to doubt
the story, 3 ; the Danish account
of, 4 ; account appears in various
nations, 6 ; known to Aryans
while in central Asia, 7 ; a solar
myth, 31, 323.

Tells, sleep of the three, a winter-
myth, 34.

Thalamus, Gladstone on, 279.

Themis, Gladstone's derivation of,
278.

Theopompos on the date of Homer,
241.

Thomas of Erceldoune corresponds
to the Tannhauser legend, 40.

Thor, as the storm-god of ancient
mythology, 25 ; as patron of
marriage, 88 5 imitated by the
Devil, 1 68.

Thorpe, Benjamin, his Anahcta
Anglo-Saxonica, 64 n. ; his North-
ern Mythology, 23 ; on were-
wolves, 122 ; on the cat-woman,
125 n. ; on seal-woman, 136 n.;
on the hand of glory, 6 1 ; on the
Devil, 172 n., 173 n.

Three Princesses of Whiteland, tale
of, 17-

Three Snake Leaves, tale of the, 82.

Thukydides, his testimony with re-
gard to a remote antiquity, of what
value, 259.

Thunder, North German myth of,
65 n.

Thunder-storm as explained by sci-
ence and by ancient mythology,
29.

Thursday as day of the fire-god,
88.

Tithonos, place of the story of,
among myths, 36.

Tom of Coventry as a wind-myth
48.

Tom Thumb and the cow, 105 n.

Torquemada on the talismanic hand
among Mexican thieves, 62.

Tortoise - myths, Hindu, 232 j
American Indian, 232.

Totemism connected with the feel-
ing of metempsychosis, 102, 1 06.

Trances, fetichism in, 300.

Trefoil, yellow, as a love-charm,
89 n.

Tristram, goblet of, 89.

Trojan War, Greek and Sanskrit
version compared, 27 ; elements
of the myth found in the Vedas,
27, 30, 263 ; the evidence for,
260 ; how far a sun-myth, 263 n. ;
how far a genuine tradition, 269—
274.

Trolls, 175-179, 225.

True and Untrue, American parallel
of the brothers, 211 n.

Trypanon, the Greek name for fire-
drill, 87.

Tuesday, etymology of, 146.

Turn-coats a name for werewolves,

121.

Twelve, derivation of, 196 ; the
Genesis of Language on, 196 n.

Tylor, E. B., prefatory remark on,
vii; on Hessian superstition, 293;
on personification of names, 301 n. ;
on other self, 303 ; on breath as
soul, 305 ; on the soul embodied
in animals, 306 ; on metempsy-
chosis among the Malays, 3i4n. j
on funeral ceremonies and object-
souls, 317; his Early History of
Mankind, 183 n. ; on an Esqui-
maux moon-myth, 220 ; on an
American sun-myth, 231 ; his
Primitive Culture praised, 284,
288 ; on barbaric idea of the sky,
64 n. ; on lightning-myths, 70 n.,
88 n. ; on the chark, 85 n. ; on
the Hindu practice of self-immo-
lation, 102 n. ; on Red Riding-
Hood, 105 n. j on cat-woman,

35

INDEX

. 5 on the word nightmare,
126 n. ; on the word (ie-vi/, 143
n. ; on Ra Vula and Ra Kalavo,
219 ; on Kamtchatkan lightning-
myth, 229.

Typhon, characteristics of, retained
by the Devil, 168.

Tyrolese, their idea of breath as the
soul, 305.

Undine, story of, degraded by Chris-
tianity, 133; origin of the myth
of, 139.

Unkulunkulu, the Great Father of
the Zulus, 320.

Urban, Pope, and Tannhauser,
40.

Ursula, and the eleven thousand vir-
gins, as a German moon-myth,
3 8 ; in Christian mediaeval mythol-
ogy, 38 ; as Venus in the legend
of Tannhauser, 38, 41.

Urvasi, story of, 130; as a dawn-
nymph and as a bird, 131.

Usilosimapundu in Zulu legend, 234.

Utahagi, legend of, 220.

Uthlakanyana, legend of, 225.

Valhalla and Odin's golden ship, 66.

Valkyries, as clouds hovering over
the battlefields, 25, 180 ; identi-
cal with the Hindu Apsaras, 139 ;
related to the Mussulman Houris,
139.

Van Diemen's Land, the home of
ghosts, 38 n.

Varuna, or the sky, the Sanskrit
form of the Greek Ouranos, 67 ;
contradiction in the Aryan con-
ception of, 149 ; a personification
of light and warmth, 149.

Vasilissa the Beautiful, Russian story
of, 105 n.

Veda, mythology of, 23 ; names of
gods and heroes in, 26 ; the Indra-
story in, 160, 161, 163 ; divini-
ties of, identified with Western gods
and heroes, 191; the story of the
Wrath of Achilleus in, 263-266 ;

records the mental life of the
" youth of the world," 267.

Vedas, the composition of, 249. v

Venus as rising from the sea, 33.

Venusberg, legend of the, 38.

Versipellis, the Roman name for
werewolf, 121.

Villemarque, J. H., Viscount de la,
his Barxas Sreix on Van Die-
men's Land, the home of ghosts,
38 n.

Viracocha, legend of, 212 ; deriva-
tion of the word, 212.

Virgil, on the etymology of the word
Latium, in the yEneid, 99 n. ;
on the myth of Hercules and
Cacus, 157, 1 60.

Vischer, W., in Tell bibliography,

.3*5-.

Vishnu in tortoise-myth, 233.

Vittikab, 1 68.

Vivasvat, as the sun, in the Rig-
Veda, 149.

Vivien and Merlin, 35.

Vocabularies, comparing of, 196,
199, 204.

Volsunga Saga, 1 80.

Vollmer, W., on Sancus, in Mytho-
logic, 1 60 n.

Vowel changes in related languages,
199.

Vritra, in the Rig-Veda, 1 60, 161,
163 ; the name generalized, 164 ;
characteristics of, retained by the
Devil, 1 68 ; and Indra, 194.

Vulcan is Wayland the Smith of
Norse mythology, 6.

Wainamoinen, Finnish, classed among

wind-myths, 44.
Wakefulness, eternal, myths of,

36.
Wallace, A. R., on Malay belief

that men can be transformed into

crocodiles, 222 n.
Wandering Jew, legend of, its place

among myths, 36 ; the curse in

the legend of, 155 n.
Water of life, 86.

352

INDEX

Waterspout, Arabian personification
of, 322.

Wayland the Smith, the Norse Vul-
can, 6.

Weber, Albrecht, on the Mara, in

'• Indhche Studien, 131 n.

Welcker, F. G., his Griechhche
Gotterlchre, 169 n.

Werewolf, etymology and meaning
of the term, 95 ; called by the
ancient Romans versipellis, 121 ;
theories of the method of change
from man to wolf, 121—123 5
accidents accompanying change,
123, 124; how cured, 125;
originally, the night-wind and a
psychopomp, 139 ; compared with
the swan-maiden, 139; the an-
cestor of the death-dog, 139.

Werewolves, and
94-140 ; belief

Swan-maidens,

in, in

ancient,

mediaeval, and modern times, 23
95 ; presents mixture of mythical
and historical elements, 96 ; Cox's
explanation of the origin of, un-
satisfactory, 96, loo, 120; real
origin of, connected with ancestor-
worship and doctrine of metem-
psychosis, 105-107, 120, 306 ;
and witchcraft, 107 ; historical
development of, 107-116, 1195
summary of the explanation of the
origin and development of, 119,
1 20 ; in barbaric myths, 222—
224. See Lycanthropy.

Wesleyafl peasants' belief in angels
piping to children, a form of wind-
myth, 43.

White Bear that marries the young
girl, story of, 133.

White-thorn, as a lightning-tree,
74 ; formed Roman wedding
torches, 88.

Wild Huntsman, story of, its place
among myths, 36.

Wilkinson, J. T., his Lancashire
Folk-Lore, on lore-charms, 89 n. ;
on a witch of Lancashire, 306.

William of Cloudeslee, the Tell of

England, 6 ; traced to sun-myth,
32.

Williams, Howard, on werewolves,
in Superstitions of Witchcraft,
125 n.

Williams, Sir Monier Monier-, on
Trolls, in Indian Epic Poetry,
176 n.

Wilson, H. H., on Hindu rite of
suttee, 315.

Wind-and-Weather, the story of,
178, 179.

Wind, as music, 42, 43 ; as psycho-
pomp, 43-47 ; as elf-maiden,
43 ; in Hindu folk-lore, 105 j
the original of the werewolf, 139,
323.

Wind-myths in ancient mythology,
41-48.

Winter-myths, 33-36.

Winterthiir, John of, does not men-
tion Tell in his account of the
Swiss revolution, 3.

Wish-bone as a talismar

75 n.

Wish-hound of Hermes, 104.

Witchcraft and the belief in were-
wolves, 107, 108.

Wolf, J. W., on the Mara, in
Seitrage xur deutschen Mytholo-
gie, 1 3 1 n.

Wolf-girdles used by werewolves,

122, 123.

Wolfian hypothesis of the composi-
tion of the Homeric poems, 245—
256.

Wolfskins used to change men into
wolves, 122.

Wolves, superstitions with regard to,
105.

Wraiths, philosophy of, 308.

Wrath of Achilleus, considered as a
structural part of the Iliad, 252—
256 ; known in Aryana-vaedjo,
263 ; in the Veda, the Iliad, and
the Nibelungenlied, 263.

Wren, as representing the storm-
cloud, 69.

Xenophon cites cases of Athenians

353

INDEX

who could repeat Iliad and Odyssey
verbatim, 247.

Ximenes, Cardinal, and his bonfire
of books, 247.

Yama in the Vedic religion, 103.
Yellow hair of the Greek heroes,

273. _
Yggdrasil, the ash-tree, first man

made from, in Norse mythology,

Youth of the World, as the title of
Gladstone's work, 235, 236;
may be applied to the Homeric
age, 238 ; is the period at which
literature begins, 238, 239 ; as

applied to the time of the Aryan
forefathers, 267.

Zendavesta, the myth of Hercules
and Cacus in, 164, 165.

Zeus, etymology of, 26, 145, 146,
267 ; his slumber on Mount Ida
a moon-myth, 41 ; derivation of
the word forgotten by the Greeks,
71 ; Lykaios, rites at the festival
of, 94.

Zio, etymology of, 146.

Zulus, their cannibal myths, 224—
228 ; their ideas of dreams, 295 j
their Great Father, 319.

Zurich, Tell's cross-bow at, 2.

THE END

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